Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Chuck Palahniuk: Tell All

So tonight on behalf of Harvard bookstore I am pleased to welcome Chuck Palin back to the First Parish Church here tonight to discuss his latest novel tell all. Also with us tonight is the fabulous Nat Hankel. And for those of you that don't know him Nat Hinkel is the creative director of the Brattle Theater. He's worked extensively in both the music and film industries and currently handles all the programming marketing and special events and one of New England's finest independent movie theaters. The Brettle theater. Mr. Hinkle has previously interviewed the likes of Jessica Lange Geraldine Chaplin rebel cops Paul Vera Hooven and David Lynch. And in just a bit we'll be inviting him on the stage to talk with Chuck Palahniuk. They'll discuss Hollywood's Golden Age and Chuck's new book tell all and you can tell by the cover tell all is a scintillating new novel that is pure Hollywood tripping with all the glitter gossip sex and bloody backstabbing that you could possibly want. It's been said that the book is vintage Hollywood and also vintage Chuck Chuck Palahniuk as you know is an award winning writer. His 10 previous novels include the bestselling Fight Club invisible monsters choke Lullabye and others.

He's also the author of fugitive's and refugees a non-fiction profile of Portland Oregon as well as the nonfiction collection stranger than fiction. Before becoming a novelist Mr. Palmach wrote manuals on fixing trucks was a member of the infamous cacophony society. Ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for joining us tonight and thank you for your patience. Please join me in welcoming Chuck Palahniuk. So thank you very much for inviting me tonight. I started writing really late in life. I started in a kind of kitchen table workshop led by a writer named Tom spanne Bauer and Tom's theory was that writers write because they weren't invited to the party. And so I always appreciate it when I do get invited to a party. Thank you for inviting me to the party and and the world is full.

Of a lot of. Really beautiful lovely sensitive stories. But tonight will not be. And that is kind of your warning that at some point this evening I'm very likely going to say something that pisses you off and that's kind of my job. So I'm sorry about that but what the hell. This is what I do for a living. And throughout the evening we are going to play some games. Oh first of all how many folks have never been to an author event never been to hear an author read work. Raise your hands. OK. It's getting better all the time. I used to be that it was every hand. But tonight we're going to we're going to play some games. I'm going to read from something that was written specifically for Toure something that that has not been published that

people can get any other way that was written just for you folks who made the effort to be here. Play some games win some prizes. Answer some questions and read this very specific short story and it looks very likely that you all will be able to compete in tonight's competition. Let's talk about minimalism. In minimalism. The way I was taught it from Tom Spindler who learned it from Gordon Lesch. You really keep your elements really pared down. You have the same number of characters from the very beginning as you do at the very end that you do the very most you can do with a very minimal number of elements. And these include your objects as well as your characters and your settings. Then instead of introducing new things ongoing Lee and losing energy every time you have to

lapse into a description of this new thing you keep things simple so that things accrue a greater sort of energy as you see them again and again in different circumstances. And the object one of the through line objects for tell all is Academy Awards or industry awards that didn't initially mean something. But then gradually accumulate to the point that they become not an acknowledgement. But just kind of a hideous burden on the life of this person. So. Throughout the evening you will compete if you choose to inflate blow up Academy Awards. And we have about 200 of them so some of you might have to do more than one. And those of you who get your awards inflated first will win

an inflated turkey. Because it was the only thing I could find. And for those of you who don't smoke and are really conscientious about aerobic exercise. You can compete in the suicide round. So. So first off. We're going to demonstrate how this little game works. Todd would you be so kind. Right. On your mark get set. We'll do some more rounds

this isn't the only round. Start on your award. This is how the awards are won in Hollywood. Now you'll notice there are three compartments on this aircraft. This lowest portion is going to be the most difficult to inflate. That's one portion. The easiest portion is the smallest portion. And then there is the figure and you do not you are not fully inflated until you can hold the award over your head like this. Emily Dickinson used to do this at her readings. So pretty much every one of the stories every one of the books that I write has got a paradox built into it. I really I like to have a story about something that is at odds

with the content of the story. And I loved how in Portland Oregon whenever the anarchists are going to have a big social protest a big civil disobedient riot I love how they all call each other and say What are you going to wear. I don't know. I think I'm going to wear black. But like a black and they all have to kind of be the same that there is is sort of this bureaucracy to anarchy. And so fight club was supposed to be this this comedy about the bureaucracy of anarchy and all the rules that were involved in anarchy. And I just loved the absurdity of that. The paradox of that and and this year's book tell all I really love romance novels when I was little my grandmother would have stacks of Harlequin romance novels and they would come in you know a dozen a month I think and she would just sit there and

read them like candy. And every once in a while we would sneak one away and we would try to find the dirty parts. But they were so heavily coded and the language was so elaborate and flowery that you couldn't find the dirty parts. His turgid manhood entered her salty depths. I can't get off to that. And I remember was pulling a Pearl S. Buck novel off the highest shelf which is where Mom kept the Pearl S. Buck novels because they were so racy. That's a big joke if you know Pearl S. Buck. And it was about. The Rape of Nanking and there was one line that said. And all the peasants had escaped to the village except for one old woman and the Japanese soldiers used the old woman again and again as if she

were a young woman. And reading that I had no idea what they danced with her. They took her out to dinner. And so I loved that nature of romance novels that language of. A really flowery euphemistic language for really carnal brutal things. And so in a way I wanted to write tell all using this this really over the top quote unquote beautiful language to talk about really base things and in this case it's a it's a love story about hatred. It really the core of the book is the hatred of one person for another. And so in that same vein for tonight I very much wanted to write a story that's told in the conventions of stand up comedy the

really sort of cliched conventions of stand up comedy but it's not a funny story. So it uses all the tropes of Seinfeld to tell a story that's not necessarily a funny story. Again you know creating that that contrasts that paradox between what is being said. And how it's being said. And so I'd like to read you a short story called Knock knock that. Pretty much instantly sold to Playboy. It'll come out in the December Playboy but. You can say you knew it when. So. Knock knock. And I have to also acknowledge that when I started writing in Tom spend hours workshop Tom would occasionally book us into these readings he

would get these readings in public places for us to present our work and he would always arrange for us to read in places like sports bars and pool halls. Where there were pinball machines and wide screen sports television and all this noise and a whole bunch of people who really did not want to hear us read. Our creative writing shed. And so you either. Got washed out. By all those people saying shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear about your daughter's death. Or you started writing stories like I started writing to deal with that. So knock knock. It's like sex. OK. You're disposed to be there and be quiet till I'm done. My old man my old man. He makes everything into a big joke.

What can I say. The old man loves to get a laugh. Growing up half the time I didn't have a clue what his jokes were about. But I Laughed anyways down at the barbershop. He didn't it didn't matter how many guys my father let take cuts ahead of him in line. He just wanted to sit there all Saturday and crack people up make folks bust a gut. Getting his sideburns trimmed was definitely a low priority. He says while man he says Stop me if you've heard this one before. The way my old man tells it he walks into the oncologist's office and he says after chemotherapy will I be able to play the violin. In response the oncologist says it's metastasized and you've got about six months to live and working his eyebrows like Groucho Marx tapping the ash from an invisible cigar.

My old man says six months he says. I want a second opinion. So the oncologist he says OK you've got cancer and your jokes stink. So they do the chemotherapy and they give him some radiation like they do even if the shit burns him up so bad on the inside that he tells me that taking a piss is like passing razor blades. He's every Saturday down by the barbershop telling jokes even if now he's bald as a cue ball. I mean he's skinny as a ball skeleton and he's getting to haul around one of those cylinders of oxygen under pressure like some little version of a ball and chain. He walks into the barber shop dragging that pressurized cylinder of oxygen with a tube of it going up and looping around his nose over his ears and around his bald head. And he says just a little off the top please. And folks laugh understand me.

My old man is no Uncle Milty He's No. Edgar Bergen. The man's skinny is a Halloween skeleton and bald and get to be dead by six weeks. So it don't matter what he says folks are going to he ha like donkey's just out of their genuine affection for him. But seriously I'm just not doing him justice. It's my fault if this doesn't come across that my old man is funnier than he sounds. Maybe his sense of humor is a is a talent. I didn't inherit back when I was his little Charlie McCarthy the whole time growing up he used to ask me knock knock and I'd say who's there. He'd say old lady and I'd say old lady who. And he'd say wow I didn't know you could yodel me. I didn't get it.

I was so stupid I was seven years old and still stuck in the first grade. I didn't know Switzerland from Shine Ola. But I want for my old man to love me so I learned to laugh whatever he says. I laugh. By old lady. My guess is that he means my mom who ran away and left us all as my old man will say about her is how she was a real looker who just couldn't take a joke. She just was not a good sport. He used to ask me. When that Vinnie Van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to that whore. He was so crazy about how he sent it. The punchline is he sent it by ear mail. But being seven years old I was still stuck back on not knowing who Vango is or what's a whore. And nothing kills a joke. Nothing kills a joke faster than asking my old man to explain himself. So when my old man says What do you get when you cross a pig with Count Dracula.

I knew to never ask what's a count Dracula. I just sit there and get a big laugh ready for when he tells me. Hampshire. And when he says Knock knock. And I say who is there and he says radio. And I say radio hoo. And he's already started to bust a gut when he says radio not I'm going to come in your mouth. Then what the hell. I just keep laughing. My whole growing up. I figure that I'm just too ignorant to appreciate a really good joke. Me my teachers my teachers still haven't covered long

division and all the multiplication tables. So it's not my old man's fault that I'm so dumb that I don't know what's come. My old lady my old lady who abandoned us. He says that she hated that joke. So maybe I just inherited her lack of humor. But love. I mean you got to love your old man. I mean after your after you're born it's not like you get a choice. Nobody wants to see their old man breathing out of some tank going into the hospital to die sky high on morphine and he's not eating a bite of that red flavored jello. They serve for dinner. Stop me if I already told you this one. But my old man gets that prostrate cancer that's not even like cancer because it takes 20 30 years before we even know he's so sick and the next thing I know is I'm trying to remember all this stuff that he's ever taught me. Like if you spray some WD

40 on the shovel blade before you dig a hole the digging will go a lot easier. And he taught me how to tie a shoelace and make a foul shot in basketball and he taught me jokes. Lots and lots of jokes. And sure the man is no Robin Williams but I watched this movie one time about Robin Williams who gets dressed up with a red rubber ball on his nose and this big rainbow colored after a wig in those big clown shoes with a fake carnation stuck in the button hole of his shirt that scores water and the guy is a hot shot Doctor Who makes these little kids with cancer laugh so hard that they stop dying. Understand me. These bald kids skeleton's who look lots worse lots more worse off than my old man. It's amazing but they get healthy and that whole movie is based on a true story.

What I mean is we all know that laughter is the best medicine. All that time being stuck in a hospital waiting room. I read every copy of the Reader's Digest. And we've all heard that true story about the guy with a brain cancer the size of a grapefruit inside of his skull and he's about to croak. All the doctors and priests and experts say that he's a goner. Only he forces himself to watch non-stop movies about the Three Stooges. The Stage 4 cancer guy forces themselves to to laugh non-stop at Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy and those Marx Brothers and he gets healed by the endorphins and the oxy generated blood. So I figure what have I got to lose all I need to do is remember some of my old man's favorite gags and to get him started back laughing on the road to recovery.

I figure what could hurt her so. So this grown up son walks into his father's hospice room pulls up a chair beside the bed and sits down. The son looks into his old man's pale dying face and he says. So this blond girl walks into a neighborhood bar where she's never been before and she's got tits out to here and a tight little Heinie and she asked the bartender for a Michelob and he serves her a Michelob. Except he sneaks a Mickey Finn into her bottle. And this blonde goes unconscious and every guy in the bar leans over the edge of the pool table and hikes up her skirt and FOX her and at closing time they slap her awake and they tell her that she's got to leave. And every few days this gal with the tits in the ass she walks in and she asks for a Michelob and she gets a Mickey Finn and she gets fucked by the crowd. Until one day she walks in and she asks the bartender can he maybe give her a

Budweiser instead. Granted I have not landed this particular shaggy dog story since I was in the first grade but my old man he used to love this next part. The bartender the bartender smiles so nice and says one. You don't like Michelob no more and this real looker she leans over the bar all confidential and she whispers. Just between you and me she whispers Nicolo makes my pussy her. The first time I learn that joke when my old man taught it to me. I didn't know what was pussy. I didn't know Mickey Finn. I didn't know what folks meant when they talked about fucking But I knew that all of this kind of talk made my old man

laugh. And when he told me to stand up and tell that joke in the barbershop it made the barbers and every old man reading detective magazines laugh until half of them blew spit and snot and chewing tobacco out their noses. So now. So tonight the grown up son tells his old dying father this joke. Just the two of them alone in that hospital room. Late late at night and guess what his old man doesn't laugh. So that son tries another old favorite. He tells a joke about the traveling salesman who gets a phone call from some farmer's daughter he met on the road a couple of months before and she says remember me we had some laughs and I was a good sport and the salesman says How you doing. And the farmer's daughter says I'm pregnant and I'm going to kill myself. And the salesman He says Damn you are a good sport. At seven years old I could really put that joke over.

But tonight tonight my old man is still not laughing how I learned to say I love you was by laughing for my old man even if I had to fake it and that's all I want in return. All I want from him is a laugh just one laugh but he's not coming across with even a giggle not a snicker not even a groan. And worse than not laughing. The old man squints his eyes shut tight and opens them brimming with tears and one fat tear floods out the bottom of each thigh and washes down each cheek. The old man's gasping his big toothless mouth like he's screaming or panting but can't do neither crying big tears down the wrinkles of both cheeks just soaking his pillow. So this kid who's nobody's little kid. Not any more. But who all he knows to do is tell these stupid jokes. He reaches into his pants pocket and takes out a fake plastic carnation flour that just for laughs sprays water all over the old crybabies face. The kid tells about

the about the Polak who's carrying a rifle through the woods when he comes across to a naked gal laying back on a bed of soft green moss with her legs spread. And this gal is a real looker and she looks at the Polak in his gun and she says What are you doing. And the Pawlak says I'm hunting for game and this real looker. She gives them a big wink and she says I'm game. So now. The Polak shifts are. It used to be this joke constituted a gold plated bona fide surefire laugh riot. But my old man still keeps dying. He's just boohooing and not even making an effort to laugh. And no matter what the old man has got to meet me half way. I can't save him if he doesn't want to live I ask him what do you get when you cross a faggot with a kike. I ask him what's the difference between dog shit and a nigger

and he's still not getting any better. I'm thinking maybe the cancer has got into his ears with the morphine and what all it could be that he just can't hear me. So just to test. Can you hear me. I lean into his old Cry-Baby face and I ask how do you get a non pregnant then more loud. Maybe too loud for this being a mackerel snapper hospital. I yell you fuck her. In my desperation I try fag jokes and wetback jokes and kike jokes. Really. Every effective course of treatment known to medical science. And the old man is still slipping away. Laying here in this bed is the man who made everything into a big joke. Just the fact that he's not biting scares the shit out of me. I'm

yelling knock knock. And when he says nothing in response. It's the same as him not having a pulse. I'm yelling Knock knock. I'm yelling Why did the existentialists cross the road and he's still dying. The old man's leaving me not knowing the answer to anything he's abandoning me while I'm still so fucking stupid. In my desperation I reach out to take the limp blue fingers of his cold cold dying hand. And he doesn't flinch not even when I grind a joy buzzer against the blue skin of his ice cold palm. I'm yelling knock knock. And nothing kills a joke faster than asking my old man to explain himself but I'm yelling Why did the old lady walk out on her laugh a minute funny man jokes her husband and her four year old kid and laying there in that bed.

My old man. He stops breathing no heartbeat. Totally flatlined. So this kid who's sitting bedside in this hospital room late late at night he takes out the Joker equivalent of those electric paddles doctors use to stop your heart attack. They ha equivalent of what a paramedic Robin Williams would use on you and some clown emergency room a kind of Three Stooges defibrillator. The kid takes a big creamy heaped up custard pie topped with a thick thick layer of whipped cream the same as Charlie Chaplin would save your life with and the kid reaches that pie up sky high overhead as high as the kid can reach and brings it down hard lightning fast slam dunking it as hard as the blast from a Polacks shot gun pow. Right in his old man's kisser. And despite miraculous well documented healing powers of the comedic arts my old man dies taking a big

bloody shit in his bed. No really I swear it was funnier than it sounds. Please don't blame my old man if you are not laughing. If you're not laughing at this point it's got to be my fault. I just didn't tell it right you know. You mess up the punch line and you can totally botch even the best joke. For example I went back to the barber shop. And I told them how he died and how I tried to save him right up to and including the custard pie and how the hospital had their security goons escort me up to the crazy ward for a little 72 hour observation. And even telling that part I've fucked it up. Because those Barbershop guys they just they just looked at me. I told them about seeing and smelling my old man dead and smeared all over with blood and shit

and whipped cream all that stink and sugar and they just looked at me. And looked at me. The barbers and the old guys chewing tobacco. And nobody laughed. And standing in that same barber shop all these years later I say knock knock. The Barbers stop cutting hair. The old goobers stopped chewing their chewing tobacco. I say knock knock. Nobody takes a breath and it's like I'm standing in a room full of dead men and I tell them death death is there. Don't you people never ever read Emily Dickerson you never heard of John Paul Stoure. I wiggle my eyebrows and tapped the ash from my invisible cigar and I say who's there. I

say I don't know who's there. I can't even play the violin. What I do know is I've got a brain filled with jokes that I can't ever forget. Like a tumor the size of a grapefruit and set on my skull. And I know that eventually even dogshit turns white and stops stinking. I have this permanent head filled with crap that I've been trained my whole life to think is really funny. And for the first time since I was that little stooge standing in that barbershop saying fag and cunt and nigger and saying kike I figured out that I wasn't telling a joke. I was the joke. I mean finally I finally get it. Understand me. A bona fide gold plated joke is like a Michelob served ice cold.

With a Mickey Finn. By somebody smiling so nice that you won't never know how bad you've been fucked and a punch line is called a punch line for a very good reason because punch lines are a sugar coated fist with whipped cream hiding the brass knuckles that sucks you right in the kisser hitting you pow right in your face and saying I am smarter than you and I am bigger than you and I call the shots here buddy boy. And standing in that same old Saturday morning barber shop I scream knock knock I demand. Knock knock. And finally one old barbershop codger. He says in barely a tobacco whisper so soft that you can hardly hear him. He says Who's there. And they wait for a bee just for the attention. My old man

he taught me that timing is crucial timing is everything. Until finally I smile so nice and I say radio that's knock knock. So at this point Ned is going to help me out since I'm completely out of breath and we're going to talk some back and forth. And then we're going to ask for some questions from you all and then we're going to blow some more stuff up. Which sounds political doesn't it.

In case you guys don't think that I commiserate with you on the inflate ability contest. Who do you think blew up those statues over there before we came out. And Heather over there. So yes I'm letting go. I book movies for a living so I was intrigued to learn about the topic of Chuck's newest novel. Which delves shamelessly into the trivia of Golden Age Hollywood. And it evokes some of the more memorable people from that time. Notably in the description of the narrator as Thelma Ritter type

which am I. I'm a big fan of Thelma Ritter actually. Everybody. Yeah everybody loves summer. Right. In case you don't know who she is she's she's sort of the quintessential character actress appearing in probably most famously rear window I think when probably the most that people have ever seen. All About Eve the man spits and pillow talk a hopeless drunk and pillow talk. She was married to Tex Ritter for a million years ago and she's famous as somebody who was nominated for multiple Oscars and never won. So when you're talking about awards earlier it came to mind. But. Tell me about what have you ever written a book in that sort of a period piece before. Which this sort of is in an abstract kind of way.

No I really haven't. But the reason why this is the only reason why this is sort of set in in a back part of history set in the past is that it was going to be a book in which I wanted it name drop relentlessly and I didn't want to get sued. Right. So it's a good tactic to choose people who are already deceased. And one of my favorite things to do was always to find a non-fiction form because that will allow me to tell an even more fantastic fictional story while lending a sense of gravity. Again it's that paradox it's telling a fantastic story using a very realistic form. You know Citizen Kane would have been a really melodramatic kind of miserable movie if it wasn't set in the context of news reels and reporters and that lent it that sense of credibility. And you see that done again and again you know in Fargo the big single card opening that says the events you're about to see are based on the truth because otherwise it's just kind of a

silly comedy like Raising Arizona. But that single card opening gives it a sense of tragedy that makes it much much deeper even though that's a total lie it's not based on true events. So using a non-fiction form of Walter Winchell or head of Hopper's gossip columns allows me to to study all those conventions like the conventions of bad standup comedy and to use them to tell a much unlike kind of inappropriate story. So that the form and the conventions of the form actually play against the nature of the story. And that's why I said it in the past so I wouldn't get sued by the people depicted. And so that I could use a form from the past that you know was ubiquitous at that time. Something that I mean being written in this style of sort of you know flashy gossip

column that obviously allows that. Name dropping. And I wanted to ask you about the Boulding if anybody has anybody cracked open the book to look at it. All of the name dropping to the point where the trademark names of pills and famous diseases and things like that are are bolded. So. I mean obviously that's the name dropping but how how hard did you think about how far to take it. You know my rule was if it's a proper noun boldface because that's kind of the rule of those columns was you know you wanted to be able to skim and figure out what Brenda Frazier was doing. You know what your specific celebrity was up to and also the other quality of those columns was how they invented language that Walter Winchell called divorces renovations and she called

gangsters from Chicago were called Chicago realize and it gave language this sort of slang the plastic quality that exists still to a certain extent like Jennifer and Brangelina. Right. We have that to a smaller extent. But back then it really was an ongoing thing and columnists could every week invent words that would instantly disseminate into the culture and be commonly used by people within a week. And so language was reinvented on a daily basis. And so I got to do that as well. Did you do a lot of research with those columns were all the because those those kinds of phrases are cited a lot in the book. Are all of those really taken from the column or did you start to invent your own. I only started with a couple I think I started with renovations and the term the Sydney school ski code for lesbian was baritone babe. And so I use to establish the precedent to

introduce the precedent. I used a couple of real ones. But then beyond them I. I invented all my own and sometimes I purposefully kind of swung out and I used ones that they never ever could have put into print and that were just really over-the-top like pink pucker sucker. Yeah. Which was my code for lesbian. And so just playing with this constant reinvention of language the way they used to do. Was another convention I could borrow it in reading the book and thinking about the themes of it and what in the world to talk with you about. Not that it's hard. It's hard. I'm struck by the incredible multi layered ness of lies and deceit you know from the different people in the book against each other and then also from you is the author to the people in the book and the end

of the quote on the back of the jacket which is paraphrasing right. McCarthy Yeah. So. The two basically the two lead characters Well three if you include the kad are all fictional but everybody else more or less and the book is a real life character right who is dead and cannot sue me. Exactly. Including the main antagonist who is Lillian Hellman right and that's who this quote was this quote the quote is on the back it says every word he's written about me is a lie including And the. That's a paraphrasing of a quote that Mary McCarthy famously said about Lillian Hellman. Right. But that was every word she writes is a lie. Right. So do you feel a kinship with Hellmann in terms of you know being but when you write fiction do you feel that

in some ways you're telling lies you know because you're making making things up telling stories the the way I used Hellmann was because she is such a wonderful example of something that we tend to think of as just something of our time. You know we look at James Fry and we think he made it up alive. He has to be really punished. And a generation ago it was Lillian Hellman and a generation before that it was Margaret Asquith who who had kind of self-aggrandize and self mythologize. And I think that we all do it and we all do it and we all feel terrible about it. And so when we catch someone publicly doing it and making money from it we have to crucify them because we recognize our own fault in them and in a way we have to exonerate ourselves. We have to somehow you know come to

terms with our own self mythologizing and lying. By making an example out of a public figure when they do it. And so in a way another part of setting it in the past was to kind of demonstrate that what we think of is just the modern problems of our time have been the problems of all time and to sort of demonstrate that we're just part of a repeating pattern of basically the same things. One of the things that we were talking before not to ruin anything but the names that are dropped throughout the book sort of become increasingly more arcane. And one of the things that I think it really drives home is the ephemeral nature of fame and the ephemeral nature of film. You know from my perspective you're talking about the paradox and I always try to find one and I was thinking about the sort of inherent irony that there is in being on

film and being you know a film performer the way we think of the image of film as being a permanent fixture. But in reality that the physical nature of film is. Is completely transient and it can dissolve and and you mentioned that you had originally wanted to use the names of all silent movie stars. How did you feel about that. Originally had written the entire book using the names of silent stars. And my editor kicked it back saying I liked the book but the names are just too esoteric. I have no idea who these people are. Jill Asmund you didn't know who Jill Azmin was. You know people that I consider still kind of famous. But he said nobody is going to get it. They're going to think these are completely made up names. And I love the irony that these people that I was citing were people who were internationally famous. They were the most famous people in the world. And it was thought that that their greatness their beauty their

talent their their work would exist for the rest of human history. And within 50 60 years they were completely obscure completely erased. And so that's why I switched from silent film stars to you know two stars of the 30s and 40s 40 right. And I mean and the Boulding goes beyond just the movie star as it's famous intellectuals and politicians and an incredible passage where a human is relating her involvement in the Manhattan Project and all of the famous designers are coming to say what the bomb should look like. And you know all these incredible. People that are just dropped in passing you know it's not you know it's almost like they're as ephemeral as sort of the image in general. And it's even more on a more basic level. This is the kind of there's

usually a few Genesys things that happen that generate the whole book and a couple of years ago I was helping promote the movie choke it was made from my fourth novel and I was in New York with with Sam Rockwell who was in the movie and we were talking at lunch and Sam was telling me about being in the movie about Jesse James it was filmed in Winnipeg with Brad Pitt and at one point he stopped himself and he got very self-conscious and he goes oh. Christ would you just listen to me. I just keep going blah blah blah Brad Pitt blah blah blah. Brad Pitt. And he said it sounds like I have some kind of name dropping form of Tourette's syndrome. And I started to recognize that that the names of people especially celebrities do function as a kind of non-language. They come in like the bark of a dog or the you know the sound of a bird that doesn't really function like a verb. Or a preposition is just a

kind of a macro. That just pops in with its own associations to generate an association of status or you know it just functions like a little piece of poetry because half the time you don't know who you're even talking about. You just nod your head and say oh I meant to read that book I'm so guilty of that. Yeah absolutely. And so in a way these names kind of I wanted to insert them. So that they did function as kind of almost jibberish poetry because ultimately that's all they become. Well and I love the use of the Boulding towards that end is actually kind of remarkable because when you know you're reading along I don't know if everybody experiences it but when I read you know I can sort of hear the voice in my head and every time I would hit a bolded something I would it would sort of turn turn into a yell you know inside my head like suddenly somebody was shouting Walter Winchell or you know

whatever and that and then there's also a description in the book of. How Lillian Hellman's insufferable monologues turn into the sounds of. Like the jungle soundtracks from Tarzan movies punctuated by the names of celebrities or whatever. I thought that was a remarkable description. Let's see what else is coming out of the. I know that for. Look I'm going to pull out my cheat sheet. Tell me about that. I mean I'm curious how you came. I don't know if there's even a story behind it but it seems like that book could have been about Hellmann but you chose to take a perspective that was by the people affected by that world and the you know hazy and Katherine as the leads.

Katherine is sort of at the time the novel is set in the alternate reality that the novel is set in. She's a fading movie star and hazy is her girl Friday essentially for all intents and purposes in the novel. How did those characters come to you when again when we were at at Park City Utah for the Sundance Festival when the people who made the choked movie were looking for a distributor and they had their showing and they sold the movie to Fox. Fox bought it. And then everyone's cell phone rang and everybody got the same text that said Heath Ledger died. And it was amazing to be in Park City as everyone as a million people got the text. Heath Ledger is dead. But I notice walking around all the movie stars who are doing their publicity having to walk from one media outlet to the next. Primarily women were just incredibly beautifully groomed just these incredibly

gorgeous perfect objects that were completely unencumbered. They didn't carry coats they didn't even wear coats. They were walking in high heels fully made up beautifully quaffed. With their hands empty burdened with nothing but gorgeous jewelry and they wandered like these forest creatures through this snowy landscape oblivious to the fact that they were at the center of all these paparazzi. And I notice that always about maybe 15 steps behind them was a kind of. Mousy heavyset woman burdened with coats and totes and makeup bags and purses and all the things that went to supporting this gorgeous thing that seemed to be walking independently and that there were these kind of pack mules the Sherpas who were. Not the kind of the Union or other of this gorgeous thing. And they carried the

burden of the perfect perfection the burden of the ongoing beauty of the thing that walked ahead of them. And when no one was looking they might rush forward and just tuck a stray hair or they might powder a nose but they always stayed so far back that they were never in the photograph. They could never be linked to that beautiful thing. And so I was absolutely fascinated. You know everyone would look at least their own. But I was always looking to see OK where is all her shit. Is all hanging around that dumpy woman over there. And so I was always looking at who is the pack mule. And I got fascinated with this this sort of class of pack mules that kind of bear the burden of the beautiful object. And that was another you know source of the novel. Well it certainly comes across in a lot of passages and descriptions it is sort of the assistant of Dorian Gray.

So I really like that the idea that she's she's a porter and that you took it from physicality to sort of emotional and you know physical appearance and all kinds of things. I just I want to ask one more question and I'm going to make it more general run about films and adaptations and things like that but when you were talking about the beginning of a talk about minimalism and being restrained in terms of the number of characters and settings and objects and things how do you feel that. That works in terms of a film adaptation where a lot of the time the instinct or the impulse from filmmakers or Studios or whoever is to put more more more on screen. I'm curious how you feel like that's come across in your films or in other adult adaptations of your novels or in other adaptations of other people's work. Let's talk about Ira Levin OK Ira Levin was a genius at that.

Ira Levin said OK we need an apartment and we need. An apartment. And we need an apartment and all of Rosemary's Baby basically takes place in seven rooms. Or we need a we need a suburban house and we need a suburban house. And the Stepford Wives takes place pretty much in one place and Deathtrap. We don't need shit for death trap death trap is one room death trap is perfect is three players it's four players and one room. And by using really really limited elements and making those elements do their duty over and over and over

in escalating ways you can get to a place that a thousand of million dollar sets and a cast of. Tens of thousands are not going to get you to. You know I see big budget movies where the frame is always filled full of action and detail and things happening and it just bores me. But I see a movie like Section 9 where it's 5 guys taking the asbestos out of an abandoned mental hospital. And those five guys are such limited resources for us to play off of each other that the kind of psychological burden automatically accelerates because we're not stopping to introduce a new thing we're not getting another establishing shot another establishing shot another big ball room. You know I think the Titanic should have been much smaller. And it would have made a better story. So every time we have to go to description to introduce a new thing a new person we lose energy. And Ira Levin

knew that. So we need for people we need at most two apartments the end and he doesn't. He did. God bless him he did incredible things with very limited stuff and maybe because he got his start in in low budget live television where you had no resources and no budget. Right. And you still had to do something incredibly dynamic. But I always see you know Ira Levin as that thing to attain. Yeah. Doing more with less rent. Yes that's true. I mean and I look at the sort of USC or UCLA grad problem people who who are trained in how to use millions and millions of dollars in a budget and then they make maybe a short film and they get to make a superhero movie for Hollywood and they don't know the economics of it. They don't know that you know the same things that have been learned from doing television production or doing low budget films or

things like that that ends up in a session 9 or moon with Sam Rockwell you know it was incredible it's him and him and that's basically and Kevin Spacey for the voice of Kevin Spacey. You can't go wrong using the voice of Vince anyway. I think that's all the time we have for this portion. Unless you want to. So what I'd like to do just to break things up before we take questions. I'd like to blow some more shut up. OK. I should be hearing blowing right now because we have got almost winner is. David. Go ahead. OK we got one. OK.

Now your questions. So if you ask her question guess what you get a turkey. This is the turkey in a little box that comes in a cute little box so there's a microphone here if you've got a question. Let's keep going until we run out of turkeys. Sidney. All right I've got a question. My boyfriend's mother and I are in a fight over you. And. She claims that you like to jerk around to manipulate your readers. She and I both dropped one of your books and we cannot remember for the life of us which one it was with the lobster scene. And she said I'm done. When she got to that scene she said

this guy he's a jerk he's manipulated me to no end. And when I read that scene I said I'm hooked. Give me everything he's written. So. So she said if I'm going to come see you to find out how you feel about about that feeling is it manipulation. Is it intense description. Is it both. Personally I kind of like being manipulated. There's there's forms of manipulation that that really I can't stand and that's when. What was the movie with Julia Roberts about the lawyer Erin Brockovich. Erin Brockovich the moment they bring us into a room with eight dying children that's not subtle. No. And there are there's certain sort of things that are presented that are instantly. I just feel like I'm being watched Forrest

Gump with friends once and we came out and somebody said I feel like I've just been emotionally jerked off. Because there were these things that were so blatantly there. Bits of music scenes of incredible path those that were just put in very briefly in order to sort of jerk an emotional reaction out of you. And those are the things that kind of manipulation I resent. I don't react to. But. But I think that I present kind of course things coarse or shocking things for ultimately kind of a sentimental reason instead of you know I try to again present that paradox where you've got this angry horrible thing that's really about heartbreak that.

You can't say I love you anymore. You have to pretend that you hate the person and that says I love you that there's got to be more effective indirect ways of expressing these sentiments that can't be directly expressed anymore because we've become a little too sophisticated to hear. I love you as anything except for a cliche. And so you know I'm just trying to tell your mother I'm just trying to say I love you well. So I know you're putting out about a book a year right now and obviously that timeframe must work for you. And my question I guess is whether you follow a similar sort of writing process with the research and the writing and editing and everything with each book or if or if each book with the content makes it a little bit different. It's pretty similar book to book you know really is. I start writing

longhand. I write longhand for a long time usually a year and then as the weather gets really poor over the winter I start to keyboarding. And last year was very very different last year my mother was diagnosed suddenly with lung cancer and she was you know she had about a year. And so I went to live with her and I took care of her for a year and everything had to be very quiet. We were either in the hospital where everything was quiet where we were in her home. Where everything was quiet. And so for the first time I wrote tell all while she was dying. And that's why I think the language is very different because I don't have any kind of music playing is I work. It's much more of a language based book and I wrote next year's book. Which is called damned really right up to the day she died. And so that process was very very different for me because I was writing in this very subdued very isolated way

where in the past I've always written publicly I've written longhand. So yeah it's it changes a little bit but. I don't have any more mothers to die. So it's not going to happen that way again. And it's funny because really tell all is about someone. Killing. This grand mythic figure while preserving a mythology which is what we kind of do when our parents die we start to miss a solid Jeyes thumb. What's the word that mythology. We start to build them up their story of down we turn them into something that much much more than they were either worse than they were or greater than they were. And I just started that process early. So yeah. Thanks yours I like how a lot of your recent books year olds playing with different genres

and different styles of writing. Have you ever considered writing a play or going into theatre. I would love to write a play that my book snuff which is about. Loosely based. Loosely based on the Annabel Chong. World record setting gangbang porn shoot that was originally shot shot there was originally written as a play. It was a play because it really does take place in one room with a very small number of characters. And I wrote it as a play and realized that selling it as a play is a whole different animal. So I turned it into a novel. And but no I loved the play form and plays do so much again with so little. It really is like are 11 like minimalism where you have one limited setting limited number of characters limited time limit. Everything has to happen with almost no resources. So no I think plays are a terrific

form like short stories. You know I love a short story that can do so much in seven pages. So but I've never produced a play. You should already have one. Ha ha ha. Oh thank you. OK. I'm kind of nervous. I read a lot of your books and I was just wondering if you wrote any of the characters to relate to you and as a character. Are any of the characters me relate to you relate to me. Are people like a piece of you and each character. Boy I ran out of me a long time ago. No seriously. And my degree is in journalism and I think so much of what a creative person does

if they're going to have an a long lasting career if they're going to be productive over time is that they really become more like an editor and a harvester. Somebody who is constantly observant and listening in the world and listening for things that other people say that have this kind of profound. You know listen to me blah blah blah. Brad Pitt that strike a chord with me and I recognize the brilliant thing that they've just said. And I still like. That that's really what it is to be a creative person is to be constantly out there stealing. And the fact that I'm doing it kind of puts me in the story. But I ran out of autobiographical stuff in my work you know. OK. You know my mother's death is kind of in there but no not nothing really literal No.

I think. There's a lot of autobiography biographical stuff in invisible monsters. Yeah my dad used to work for the railroad and he would come home in the middle of the night and he would wake us all up and we'd have to get in a truck and drive out in the middle of nowhere because there'd been a train accident and he knew we could steal stuff until dawn and so we'd all be out there in our pajamas in the middle of the desert in this freezing cold wind stealing lumber or stealing whatever was spilling out of these de-railed box cars. And I wrote that into invisible monsters. So there are these little things here and there but those are mostly in the earlier novels. So my favorite book. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. So in a lot of your books you have a lot of random interesting facts. I think most massively for me and survivors a lot of things is there we go about. Researching these very tiny but interesting facts

and that is how much of it is true. I guess the idea now a lot of writers research in order to write and I like to think of myself as a writer that writes in order to have the excuse to research. And that's why I got a journalism degree because I thought that you know if I have a journalism degree it's kind of a permission it's an ongoing license to be meeting people. You know it's OK. I'm a reporter. You can talk to me. And have a really rich interesting life where I am around people who are accomplishing things then I'm around disaster's I'm around good and bad things. But then I got a degree in journalism and I realized that it means being around planning council meetings and school board meetings and a bunch of stuff that just bored the crap out of me. So now when I'm working on something and I need a bunch of detail. That's my excuse my

permission to go out and to interview people in the world and to find out those details from the individuals themselves. And it's. Kind of you know. I don't know how to be with you. I have no idea how to do this. I don't know what to say. I don't even know what to do with my hands while I'm doing this. So I had to bring all this stuff so that I have a structure and I have to bring a script so that I have a rough idea of what to say next because otherwise I'm kind of a social retard. And the same way with research. I can walk into your office and I can say you're an expert at blank tell me all about it. And so the research is really gives me a way of being with people and that's all I want is just to live my life around other people. So thank you. So my question is you said you got to ring fiction

kind of late and I'm wondering what it was that drew you to fiction specifically and how the process was for you writing your first book. I got to writing fiction really late. I think when I was 33 and and I started doing it to keep my mind occupied at work because we would have these long stretches at work when we were waiting for parts. I worked at Freightliner and we would find out that we couldn't complete a repair procedure on a truck because the parts hadn't come in and everyone had to sit around and I needed something to keep me from everyone else would go out and smoke dope and I needed something to keep my attention. So I would start to write these stories and then I got into a writer's workshop that I met around someone's kitchen table. Andrea

Carlisle and she was just a really honest earnest writer of short stories. And then she read a scene in my first novel which was 800 pages of garbage. But it's a scene that I later kind of transplanted. I took out this scene it was one of the few things I could save from this terrible long thing. And it was a scene that subsequently in in the novel snuff where the protagonist is obsessed with a woman so he buys a sex doll and he grooms it and he styles it so it looks as much like. His Beloved as possible. And then he seduces it he he an Access drama with it and that's he's having sex with it. He realizes that in unzipping the back of its dress he's snagged it in a tiny tiny way and it slowly losing air and that he has got to complete the act before it's completely flat and this beautiful smooth thing that was so nice looking is gradually

shrinking and wrinkling and becoming going from a beautiful woman to a kind of a withered hag to this kind of hideous mummy this leathery awful thing beneath him as he's pumping away faster and faster. And by the end of the scene this horrible deflated pink thing is hanging off of his erection and he still hasn't gotten off. And dear sweet Andrea Carlile read that scene. And said we don't want you here anymore. There are just some members of the group who don't feel safe with you here. And she said there's a writer named Tom Sandara who just moved to Portland and he's taking students. So you might just haul your obscene ass over there and it was perfect because Tom was writing the kind of very dynamic very edgy stuff that made me excited to write. And in Tom's workshop we focused on short stories. If you can't do it in seven

pages you sure as hell can't do it in 700 pages. So seven pages was the ideal length for a story and seven pages I could keep that hidden at work and I could pull that out and line edited at work any time I wanted to and that you could put seven pages underneath a truck manual and no one will ever find it. And so. That's how I started writing. And once my stuff was good enough Tom recommended his agent. And that's how I got an agent. And yeah I hope that answered that. My question is how well do you think the movies did that came from your books did to portray the meaning behind the books. Yeah. Number one. I am not a big meaning person. I say I think at best

a story is a compelling object in which the consumer finds a meaning. Is it kind of a Rorschach test in which I hope a reader finds a connection a way and I hope that there's some aspect of the story that resonates with the consumer the readers life. That's my goal. That there is something in this compelling thing that will hold their attention and also resonate with some unexpressed part of their life. Beyond that I'm not going to dictate a single meaning. So in that way I'm off the hook but I think that there are aspects of the story that are kind of sacrosanct. And in both choke and Fight Club there is a there is a public deception taking place where in Fight Club a person goes to support groups for terminally ill people and allows those people to feel that he is also dying like they are. And so that they have a way of being with him and consoling him and allowing him to

express his emotions. And thats a big lie. Its a big inauthenticity likewise and choke the protagonist pretends to choke in restaurants so that people think that they saved his life. They think that they had a moment of fantastic heroism where they themselves stepped out of the crowd and saved a human being's life. And in doing so he gets hugged he gets physical contact with a stranger. And I think if you have a social inauthenticity that the contract is that that character who is the sceptre must be brought back to that context must be unmasked revealed humiliated and the people who were deceived must be given the option of either accepting that flawed deceptive person or rejecting and shunning that person and in Fight Club in choke in the books.

We do have that third act scene where the social authenticity is completed and the character is subjugated to the people that he has deceived and in both the movies. We never came back to that scene and David David Fincher he said you know we were at two hours and 20 minutes. We couldn't we couldn't fit that scene into the movie. And Clark Gregg the director on choke said you know we shot that scene that we shot the whole sequence too dark. We don't have the money to reshoot it. And I have to wonder though actors and acting people are so so so invested in being sympathetic and likable both as people and as there are characters that I have to wonder if if movies are just a place that cant go to that point of humiliation they cant risk looking that bad publicly because it seems like an odd coincidence that exactly the same element is missing from both

movies and thats why it has to be in the book or on the page because you're not going to like the guy who tells you the knock knock story. And actors really really want to be liked