Free Range
Free Range
A Film Club Q&A goes off the rails, and we end up discussing........everything
A couple weeks ago, Alex Didion emailed me with a request. Didion runs a Substack called Lack of Taste, which bills itself as “a newsletter about movies for people who don’t like movies.” Didion asked if I’d participate in his recurring Film Club series, in which he interviews a subject about one of their favorite films, and much else. I said yes, even if it took us a while to agree on a favorite that both of us had seen. Sadly, he’d never watched Buffy the Vampire Layer or Sleeping Booty, which technically might not be general-interest titles. But we agreed upon Glengarry Glen Ross, written by David Mamet, directed by James Foley, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, and a murderer’s row of the finest acting talent. But before we discussed the film, we conversed about nearly every other imaginable subject, from the demise of my old magazine, to the genius of Tom Wolfe, to Quality TV favorites, to the sorry state of film and print magazines, to how politics ruin comedy, to political polarization and how it is killing our country, to journalism friends I fight with, to what Christopher Hitchens would do now, to Mamet’s Trumpster turn, to fly fishing, to you name it. It was like a good stream-of-consciousness throwdown during a drinking session at your favorite bar. And then we (finally) got around to Glengarry Glen Ross, which might contain all of life’s important lessons in an hour and forty minutes of celluloid perfection. Didion was generous enough to let me simulcast this slightly-edited version of our conversation here. But you ought to give his Lack of Taste a read as well. If you’re on Gmail and/or a phone, this edition might show up as too long. In the event that happens (it won’t for everyone), click on the read-the-whole-thing link, or however Gmail phrases it, or just go to my site at mattlabash.com to read it unabridged. And here’s the interview:
So what had you been doing in between your Substack and the closure of The Weekly Standard?
Well, since launching Slack Tide as some call it, because that’s what I named it, I’m holding on for dear life. Having your own thing demands a bit more frequency than I was used to with my once-a-quarter or so clip at ye olde mag. We print magazine types used to require a lot of time to select stories, report stories, and prayerfully meditate over stories. Which basically means we went out to lunch a lot while procrastinating. But in between The Weekly Standard, and Substack? I was pretty much Dustin Hoffman in the pool in The Graduate. Just drifting. Except I don’t have a pool. Neither was I bonking older women like Mrs. Robinson. I did some writing for everyone from the New York Times to The New Republic to The Spectator to The Drake (a fly fishing magazine) to you name it. But not so much writing that I didn’t take lots of time to fish and kayak and chop wood and cook and walk my dog through the woods and that sort of business – the business of life. Sadly, the business of life doesn’t pay very well. And I have two college tuitions breathing down my neck. So after a couple years of that, I went back to work in more vigorous fashion. Though I still do the rest, as well, because a person has to stay whole. Just not quite as much of it.
As a fan of your writing, I'm hoping that you could clue me into the way you style your prose because it reminds me heavily of Tom Wolfe. His writing is the closest to comprising a mosaic of the world since it has multiple POVs competing to be the reliable narrator, and intense attention to detail in reconstructing scenes and lampooning materialistic life choices as seen in Radical Chic. If someone asked how anyone could write like you, what would your advice be?
Well thank you kindly, but my advice would be not to. I mean, I too, love Tom Wolfe, don’t get me wrong. I’ve read just about every word he’s written and probably wanted to be him when I was 22, minus the ice-cream-man suit and spats. His attention to the telling detail was second to no one’s, and he was a prose pyrotechnician, besides. The dude could write about grass growing and make it interesting. And he had great story sense – as in what made one. But after you read those journalism collections of his, which are all wonderful, and you decide you want to be Tom Wolfe, and start laying it down, you realize how utterly futile it is to imitate him. Because there is and could only ever be one Tom Wolfe, and he died in 2018 (with his spats on, I’m guessing). I can’t pull off onomatopoeia and multiple exclamation points, and wouldn’t want to. Not that that was the meat of his writing – just some of the distracting accents. Kind of like drugs were for Hunter Thompson, whose most interesting writing often had nothing to do with drugs. In fact, drugs were maybe the most boring part, save some chunks of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
But my larger point is that you ultimately have to sound like yourself, or it’s not worth doing. If your voice is worth hearing, write in it. Fully inhabit it. If it’s not worth hearing, then get out of the business and find something more stable to do like BASE jumping or child soldiering, since journalism is in a perpetual state of collapse anyway. Especially the written version of it. But you can’t build a real writing life on imitation. It’ll never work. It might be useful to have good people to steal from when you first get started, just to find your rhythm. But ultimately, you have to find your own rhythm. If you don’t, you’ll be found out as a fraud, and it won’t be very satisfying anyway, to be voicing someone else’s thoughts or mannerisms.
Incidentally, while we’re talking Wolfe – and I wrote this up a few months ago in a piece I did on writing on my site – but I met him once, long ago in my twenties. We were at the same dinner – he was the guest of honor, I, then as now, was just a mope. I promised myself I wouldn’t slobber all over the poor guy if I met him. Wouldn’t want to mess up his suit. But I was pretty deep in my cups once I encountered him. And it just came out, almost involuntarily: “Mr. Wolfe, I need you to know, whenever I have trouble getting it up, writing-wise, I just read something you wrote like ‘The Last American Hero,’ your story about {the stock-car racer/moonshiner} Junior Johnson, and it’s like an adrenaline shot to the ‘nads.” I embarrassed myself. And him, I’m sure. But he was his usual courtly Virginia-gentleman self, and generously offered: “You know, I do the same thing when I’m in that spot. But I read Henry Miller.” I liked that answer a lot, as Henry Miller is a pretty good adrenaline shot, too
A recurring topic that you write about in your newsletter is political polarization in America and how almost everyone is in their own Metaverses, where they are the heroes of their own story and, to quote from The Dark Knight, live long enough to become villains. From my personal experience I know some friends who delude themselves into their own ideology, they rarely get the chance to sit down and relax, and eventually rot into horrible human beings. What would you usually do to avoid that character arc?
I would say that we all, of course, have our political predilections, our biases, our pocket lists of villains we think deserve to die slow, painful deaths. That’s natural. But our politics, held onto too tightly, inevitably ruin just about everyone. If you can never hear the music, or appreciate the humanity of the people you disagree with – and they almost all have something to recommend them - whether you’re a foaming-at-the-mouth Trumpster, or some tight-assed faculty-lounge wokester, you’re gonna miss out on the full human experience. You’re gonna live in your cramped, filthy hovel of a world with grievance and anger and resentment, which ain’t gonna affect your ideological enemies very much, but it will eat up your insides. So my advice would be get outside. Both physically – in nature, which is a balm – and outside yourself, as well. Your crap never smells as good as you think it does. So smell somebody else’s on occasion. Read other things besides political BS. My reading diet spans lots of subjects – I very rarely read straight-up political books. Because political life, as currently practiced, is death. You can only take so much of it, and stay healthy.
I love magazines. Buying a print edition for me is like buying a comic book. And you wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about the substantive decline of men's magazines, around the time when GQ had a special issue about being a man, which nowadays is hardly traditional. I found men's magazines fascinating because they often border on tastelessness. I remember when GQ used to do scantily clad covers of female celebrities, but not anymore. Esquire used to have a "sexiest woman alive" every year, but now their main attraction is a left-wing blogger. Every article from those outlets always has to conform to the celebrity's ego, rather than permitting the reader to appreciate the beauty of these people, because that's clearly part of their personality, alongside whatever talents they have. Also, the writing back then was tolerable and wasn't all about spotting potential crypto-fascists. How the hell did it come to this?
Sorry man, I hate comic books. But I’m with you otherwise, brother. I miss hot supermodels and overwritten stories on all manner of subjects. Magazines were almost……aspirational. You were entering another world. I still subscribe to them out of lifelong habit, but I barely feel like I need to check in anymore. Unless I aspire to be some neutered house pet policing actual writers for using the wrong pronoun, while body-positive editors assure me that I should be attracted to 300-lb models in groaning yoga pants. It’s all a stupid scam, and isn’t fooling anyone. Except maybe the people who work there, and I doubt even them. The last gasps of a dying sphere. The world is often a sad place. And magazines have become an even sadder version of an already sad place. I mean plenty of the ones that still exist – because many have ceased to exist. Or else they’ve cut back their publication frequency so much, they might as well go under. And I don’t say any of this with joy or smugness. I say it with deep and genuine sadness. Because I, too, have always loved magazines. Many of my favorite writers came out of them. And I worked in them for most of my life. Still do, sometimes. Magazines were once a great place to do work that had immediacy, but with 360-degree vision and without the straitjacket that newspaper writers often have to wear. (And newspapers too, except for a few of the majors, are mostly dying.) Magazines also used to feel like they had greater carry than what happened in online world. But that distinction has been almost completely eroded. There are people who work for storied print magazines now (The Atlantic, The New Yorker), and who still do great work, but who almost don’t care if they get in the print version of their own magazine. Because if it’s not online, it really doesn’t exist. Posting your story then ringing the social media bell is really all that matters now. I’m still not on Twitter. But I am a lonely salmon, swimming upstream on that one. And of course, I don’t begrudge people getting my stuff out there on Twitter. In fact, I appreciate it. Because I’m a total hypocrite, as well. Here’s hoping someone is Tweeting this out now, or nobody will see it
Were you surprised by the closure of the Standard?
Surprised would be putting it mildly. I think we found out from corporate that we were getting shuttered in the beginning of December, and we were packing boxes and out on the street by mid-December. Just in time for Christmas! Which tells you a lot about corporate. We were a little too anti-Trumpy for our owners. Now, our sister publication, which they still own, The Washington Examiner, just the other day went hard anti-Trump. Quick studies! It only took them seven years or so to gather the evidence that was readily available from the start. But hey, better to come to your senses later than never.
You are close friends with Greg Gutfeld. He now hosts his own late-night show every night. But it has not earned him a lot of fans on the liberal side of politics, which is weird because {Gutfeld’s old show} Red Eye once had Amy Schumer and Steven Crowder on the same show. Is it still possible for right-wingers to be funny and ALSO get their political opponents laughing WITH them?
“Close friends” is stretching it. I haven’t meaningfully talked to Greg in several years. Not because I don’t like him, but because his new contract forbids him to speak to the little people. But I’ve known him for about 25 years or so. In fact, I once told Roger Ailes – when running into him at a corporate party (Rupert Murdoch used to own both our magazine and Fox) that he should put Gutfeld on at 11 pm to let him compete head-to-head with the late-night comics. I was a programming genius, obviously. But Ailes told me they were already making tons of money running Bill O’Reilly reruns at eleven. Then he asked me to do a twirl in my short skirt and sit on his face. Which I thought was borderline inappropriate.
And no, I don’t think what you said is possible anymore. Everything’s polarized. Though it’s kind of possible. Because there are a lot of comics who aren’t card-carrying wingers, who are just now openly revolting against the anti-comic Stasi, and who almost sound like wingers as a result. Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, etc. They’ve been hammered so hard, they’re tired of it. And I don’t blame them, and welcome their free-speech advocacy. Because without the freest of free speech, almost nothing that gets said is worth saying. If you want to illuminate the human condition, the mind needs room to roam.
Conversely, many overt wingers have also lost their senses of humor, unbeknownst to them. Because they, too, have become overly-politicized. (Like I said before, politics ruin everyone.) They rely too much on the same three clapter punchlines that are more social statements than jokes, that don’t depend so much on funniness, as they do on your audience agreeing with you. So much of what now passes for conservative “comedy” is just beating wokesters over the head. And don’t get me wrong, they deserve to be beaten over the head. That is not an unworthy endeavor. But it’s also become a crutch. There’s no challenge or surprise in it. And all good drama and comedy turns on not knowing exactly what’s coming next. The best drama/comedy leads the audience some place they weren’t necessarily prepared to go. Dave Chappelle understands that intrinsically. Which is why he’s so interesting to watch, even when he’s not trying to be overtly funny. In fact, he sometimes makes me laugh the hardest when he’s being dead serious, then peppers his seriousness with a joke. He understands the deeper kind of funny. Which is an increasingly lost art.
You also were friends with the late Christopher Hitchens. I do not want to take the route of "what would he do in 2022" like most pundits, when the world of journalism has dramatically shifted and the media now has larger barriers to entry, with little public trust to be had in the majority of journalists, either because they don't get their stories straight or they put their internal drama on Twitter. But I'm gonna go there anyway, because Christopher Hitchens has been more than a distinct voice, and would have a lot to say and his challenges would certainly be bigger than they were when he supported the Iraq War. Do you think that's a fair assessment?
It’s difficult to say what Hitchens would be like now, or where he would land, because he was not opposed throughout his career to landing in unexpected places. Which generally speaks well of him. I like to think he’d flame all of the extremists: both the wokearati and the January 6 defenders. Two sides of the same coin, in many ways. Both of them, cultists, of a sort. Both of them hurting the country. The one thing Hitchens had a deep commitment to was Orwell. In that department, he went so far as to write a book titled Why Orwell Matters. And one thing Orwell wrote, in a piece for The Atlantic Monthly in 1946 (back when magazines really mattered) was:
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.
Hitchens wrote that way – he was fearless, even when I disagreed with him, which I sometimes did. On Iraq and the God question, for instance. But he was afraid of no one. He’d take on all comers. Though it would be fair to say that dishonesty on all sides is more pervasive now than it was even in 2011, when he died, there’s no reason for me to expect that Hitchens would’ve held his fire on either side. He’d have probably sprayed them both with a Tommy Gun. Or maybe not. But the only saving grace of life not lived is that you can imagine it would’ve unfolded exactly as you wanted it to.
I know that one of your close friends, Tucker Carlson, does fly fishing and so do you. In fact, you wrote a book about fly fishing with Dick Cheney. Tucker has definitely said that he fly fishes every day because it allowed him a break from the emotional intensity of journalism. I've never been fly fishing, but if I were on a road trip and I'm asked to catch one by one of my mates, what should be my expectations?
What is this? Quiz Labash on famous people he knows day? You’re not going to ask me about D.B. Cooper next, are you? Because I can’t talk about that. My entire book wasn’t actually about fly fishing with Dick Cheney. It was a collection of magazine pieces called Fly Fishing With Darth Vader, and Cheney was the Darth Vader of the title piece. And yes, Tucker and I are still good friends, which will inevitably piss off some of your readers and mine who disagree with him about many things. As do I, all the time. (Even if we also agree about plenty – like fishing and dogs are good, and open borders are bad.) But we go wayyyy back – he started out with me at The Weekly Standard back in 1995. And he’s been a genuinely good friend to me over the years (he once sent me flies made out of my dog’s fur), even if we email tussle all the time. We argue even more in recent years with all that’s gone on. Sometimes, violently, though never personally. We both have a high pain tolerance. But who cares? So many people now think that if you disagree with someone politically, you have to eliminate them from your life. Which is bullshit. I would encourage people to retain friends in their lives who they disagree with. Especially because if you cut out all the people with whom you disagree about anything, you’re probably not going to have many friends left. So embrace diversity! (As the wokesters say.) If you really want to know what you think, the best way to find out is to talk to people who don’t think like you. Even if they’re wrong. And when Tucker and I argue, he’s always wrong. (Though I suspect he’d argue that point.)
But as to fly fishing, what could you expect if you ended up catching one? That your life would be changed forever. For the better. It changed mine, and it does most of the people I know who do the same. Feels like a crime to try to cast magic into words. But that’s what it is. Magic. If you find magic, always go with it. Don’t ask too many questions, or you might spoil the illusion.
What's the best piece of writing that you are most proud of?
That’s a hard question. One that’s setting me up to sound like a jerkoff if I answered it straight ahead: “Here is my writing. I am proud of it! Please agree!” I’ve written plenty of pieces that I’m proud of, mind you. Things I worked hard on, that I deeply connected with, that I hope other people connected with, too. Pieces that I stayed up nights sweating blood over. I tend to fret over all of them, by the way, even the most minor trifles that someone might assume I casually dashed off. But the truth is, none of them matter now. Because if you’re still writing, the only thing you really care about, or should, is the next piece. Every one of which, is a chance to fail anew. Trying not to suck is a full-time job for any writer, or should be. The minute you think you can’t, you probably will.
This is a bit of a segue into the next segment, but what TV shows are you watching right now? Also, out of curiosity do you happen to watch any anime?
I would rather watch baby seals get clubbed than watch anime. (And I love baby seals.) Maybe I’m missing out, but it’s a little sulky, for my taste. Plus, I haven’t watched cartoons since Bugs Bunny when I was eating Lucky Charms out of the box on Saturday mornings back in the ‘70s. I didn’t even watch The Simpsons or South Park, except for the occasional YouTube clip. I do watch a lot of Quality TV, as the Quality TV-makers insist we call it. (How’d they arrange that? Can we call our Substacks “Quality Substacks,” thus suggesting they’re good, even if they blow?)
Shows I’ve loved in the last couple years? A partial list: Bill Hader’s Barry (the best show about a contract killer/community-theater actor that’s ever been conceived), Ricky Gervais’s After Life (a brilliant, sad, and funny show, about a widower newspaperman), Succession (sue me, I’m easy), Righteous Gemstones (love that one, even if Season 2 was way over the top, but I’m a Danny McBride fiend), Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (the best comedy still on the air after twentysomething years), Yellowstone (Kevin Costner’s back, and cranky as hell!), Ted Lasso (I didn’t think I liked feel-good soccer shows or Jason Sudeikis, who knew?) and I even like The Morning Show - I enjoy a feisty Reese Witherspoon, and Billy Crudup has always been an underrated actor, and does some of his finest work here.
Before going into this film, have you seen any of David Mamet's work and given a recent aspect of his politics that's becoming more apparent (he supported Donald Trump AND believed that the election was stolen), would you be comfortable having him on your side?
Yeah, I’ve see plenty of his other films (many adapted from his plays). House of Games – I adore that film - almost made me want to become a professional conman. Instead, I became a journalist, which is pretty close. Mamet is responsible for many other things I love, or at least like a lot: Things Change, Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner. But Glengarry Glen Ross – also adapted from Mamet’s play by Mamet himself – is far and away my favorite. In fact, it’s definitely in my Top 5 films of all time, and don’t ask me the others – besides Miller’s Crossing and Diner – because I don’t want to have to waste the rest of the day thinking about what gets the other two slots. Something by Scorsese has to make the cut, probably (maybe Goodfellas, maybe Raging Bull). And of course, they’d take your fly fisherman’s card away if you don’t say Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through it (which is, by the way, a near-perfect film that I never get tired of watching). Maybe Wes Anderson’s Rushmore or Royal Tenenbaums could come off the bench, or even steal a starter’s slot.
As a political commentator? Mamet’s a sad, overly-partisan hack. Sorry, but he is. I admire his contrarian instincts, mind you. Not easy to do in the entertainment sector. But he basically traded one bleating herd of gullible sheeple for another. I hate to tell people to stay in their lane, but he should have. In fact, I’ll make a deal with him: if he doesn’t crank out overheated, credulous, conspiratorial nonsense, I won’t crank out award-winning films and plays. Problem solved.
The screenplay is the most prominent star of the film. You feel the cast is competing against its acerbic energy. Do you have any favorite lines and who brought the best performance in the film?
That’s a hard call or should be, because everyone came to play. It was a Dream Team situation. Genius at every turn. Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris – all three gave some of their finest performances. Alec Baldwin, with his “Always Be Closing/Set of Steak Knives” speech, was as good as he’s ever been, or will ever be. Even the more mild-mannered throwaways – the performances by Kevin Spacey and Jonathan Pryce – did exactly what they needed to do.
But for my money, Al Pacino as Ricky Roma – that belongs on the Mount Rushmore of acting performances. Just perfect in every way. There are so many Pacino performances I love, but none as much as this. (Godfathers I and II included.) His triumphant set piece, the soliloquy he delivers as the real-estate hustler trying to reel in a mark (played by Pryce), is a sublime marriage of acting and writing at their best
Rewatching the film, there are some truths to be had about the corporate environment. We all know it is cutthroat, but you feel a sense of desperation once the stakes are pushed to eleven. Jack Lemmon's Shelley “The Machine” Levene was by far my favorite character; he's sympathetic enough that by the time we realize he pulled off the robbery at the end, we realize that he seems relatively weak once he is up to the challenge, compared to his colleagues, because he's set up with the worst leads. Beneath all the profanity, you'll find a tragic film, with salesmen being emasculated, and becoming more suspicious of the firm's management that they eventually quit. What did Mamet capture about working in an office?
So you’re a Machine Levene guy, I’m a Ricky Roma guy. It’s like Beatles vs. Stones, but I get why you loved Lemmon. He was brilliant.
What Mamet captured about the corporate environment is how ruthlessly Darwinian it is. In order to succeed in this environment, you have to subvert your humanity. Yet in order to be good at your job, you have to be in touch with it. To part people from their money, you have to think and talk like them just enough to cut their throats. (Hey, it really is like journalism!) It’s kind of like the old Roger Stone line on politics: “Unless you can fake sincerity, you’ll get nowhere in this business.”
At the same time, you’re right, it’s tragic. You get the sense everyone is doomed – even the “success” stories – and this life, this art of deception they’ve chosen to excel at, isn’t sustainable.
Ricky Gervais mined this in other ways, to comic effect, in the original British version of The Office, and the American version did much the same. Except the deception was mostly self-deception: that their lives weren’t as sad and empty as they actually were. The stuff of great comedy.
Let's talk about Kevin Spacey. He has been in exile after being caught as a groomer, though we sometimes see him trolling everyone with his Christmas videos. While that smug, domineering schtick doesn’t wear well upon hearing that news, Spacey is perfect as the office manager, John Williamson. His weakness is in losing control of the salesmen since he believes he has enough power granted by management by refraining from having a say in the operations. But there are two things that caught me with Williamson: the way he has caught Levene in the act, making him so desperate, and that he is berated by Al Pacino's Ricky Roma, who is the least ethical salesman in the building. Both of these characters, from opposite ends of the spectrum, have different opinions of the management but their job performances could not be more different. Yet throughout the film, Spacey is more low-key than what I would come to expect from him. Is that fair to say?
Yes, he wasn’t his full Kevin Spacey-self. The scenery-chewer he later became, much like Pacino has always been. But it’s what the part called for. And he played the perfect foil for Pacino, serving as the soulless corporate clock-watcher who just doesn’t get it. Who needs to be despised. (That last bit being good practice for what later happened to Spacey in real life.) Whereas Pacino embodied the honor-among-thieves ethos. One of my favorite lines comes from his berating Spacey’s character, in his disappointment with John Williamson bunging up a sale: “Jag-off John opens his mouth, blows my Cadillac. I swear, it is not a world of men.”
You once said that the ‘90s was the last time cinema was at the height of artistic creativity, and certainly, Glengarry Glen Ross is part of that pantheon. Have you given up on movies to give you the demands in storytelling that you want?
Well, to give you an idea, I used to physically go to the movies about 25-30 times a year. Now I’m probably down to about two, if I’m lucky. I’d rather stay home and watch good documentaries. Ross Douthat, in the New York Times, actually illustrated the how and why of this more fully than I could. And he’s nearly a decade younger than me, so it made me feel validated that he similarly located the ‘90s as being right around the time of film’s twilight glow, as he called it. That’s not to say that good films don’t still get made amidst all the tent-pole cape’n’codpiece dross. They do. But studio types have so successfully chased the real talent to smaller screens, where they can actually blow out their stories in more novelistic fashion than in a two-hour shot at the multiplex. So aside from all the other pressing market forces (like the pandemic), the industry let a lot of the air out of their own tires. Not unlike the media industry unwittingly chasing so many of their stalwarts off, the latter of whom are now doing their stuff elsewhere as independents. Like on Substack. The parallels are striking. There ain’t a lot of Tom Wolfes anymore. Of course, there never were. But even if a young Tom Wolfe still stalked the earth, what would they do with him now? Probably put him in a cubicle and tell him to write three pieces of clickbait per day. As Ricky Roma said, it is no longer a world of men. And not just because half of them are changing their pronouns.
You’ve earned your coffee. Merry Christmas!
Every time I print out the latest Slack Tide, and sit down to read it, I am never disappointed.
Glengarry Glen Ross is a true work of art. And like some of your pieces you are most proud of, so many don’t know it.