History Series 4: William Mann / Hollywood History / Marlon Brando / Black Dahlia

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together. OK. And. We're live. Awesome, William. Welcome. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate this. I'm so excited for our talk today. Great to be here. Thanks. Yeah, so actually one of the things that struck me when I when I was, I was doing homework and I'm trying to find some cool guests and some people that I think I'd relate to and I'd be interested in hearing about their story and their work. And I came when I came across your site, one of the things that I saw was your emphasis on how much Hollywood and entertainment shapes our perspective and our values and stuff like that.

0:51 And it's funny because when I was actually in high school, I was a a dweeby, hopeless romantic that had absolutely no luck with any kind of romance and. And I. I forgot I was talking to friends of mine and and I was and we were talking about how we didn't know what the word romantic even meant. We just kind of had the association of that, you know, Adam Sandler, 51st dates, walk on the beach kind of thing. And, you know, and, and then I realized, and then what, you know, the more we were talking about and thinking about it, the more that we realized how much of our definition understanding of events we just kind of leave up in the air for Hollywood or for media around us to kind of fill in.

1:34 And, you know, so that actually got me excited down the rabbit hole and I wanted to actually get involved in Hollywood to have hopefully a positive impact. I didn't, you know, ultimately or not yet, but you know, hopefully this will be something like it. But I, I, I, I, I was very happy to notice that you made that same observation. I'd like to just ask how you how you came to notice it? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's unavoidable really. I mean, media has always influenced the way we think of ourselves and how we pursue relationships. All of that, you know, I mean it, you know that that predates the movies and when that, you know, that was truly going to vaudeville and and reading the you know, the popular press and all of all of this.

2:21 So once popular culture extended into the masses, because let's remember way back when, the only people who saw culture were, were the elites and they had their own set of rules, right? And, and so, and the culture was kind of responding to their own traditions and their own attitudes towards relationships and identity and all of that. But once pop culture began reaching the masses, And so that's in, you know, the late 19th century and we're getting, you know, minstrel shows and Baudville and, you know, the Nickelodeon's, the early movies, then suddenly the masses began to look at those images which were still being done kind of in imitation of the upper classes.

3:14 So, and some people began to aspire and, and popular culture, for the most part, this isn't entirely true, but for the most part from that point on, popular culture was aspirational for people. So they would look at these people on the screen or in the fan magazines or in the, in the literature they were reading and they would say, I want to be like them. And, and this became particularly true during the the 1930s, during the depression, when people were, you know, out of work and, and struggling. And they would look at these images on the Hollywood screen and say, oh, if only our lives could be like that. So it, it does two things, I think.

3:56 And, you know, that that continues up to today too, in, in different ways. People, you know, there's been a lot of studies on how young people, especially young girls, look at Instagram or social media and they say, why can't my life be like that? And you know, but those lives are off often as artificial as the lives that were being shown on the screen of the 1930s, right? So, you know, it's, it's aspirational. So it, it, it does two things. It makes you want to strive and get more, but it also ends up sometimes making you feel bad about yourself and that your lives aren't as good as those people we're seeing on the screen or on on our phones or wherever you're getting these images.

4:37 Because it's really the same thing now that images and pop culture reaches everyone, everyone's kind of dealing with That's the same issues like like you say about what does it mean if I fall in love? You know, how what do I expect my partner to be and act? And you know, you know, and so there's all these expectations that are thrown at people, and sometimes that's hard to live up to. Yeah, definitely. And what's I think that was great. And I actually think additionally, we know that that's you, we, if you ask most people, you know, is it good for you to be doing this or to be honest? And what's the impact it has on you? I think most people are completely cognizant of what it's doing to them.

5:21 But like there's a, there's a dissonance between what, you know, to be unhealthy and like what you want to consume. You know, I mean, the same way that and, and the kind of way, and I've said this before, but I look at everything almost like an opportunity for either junk food or healthy food. And, you know, every now and then it's not too bad to have a couple of slices of pizza. But if that's all you're doing, then we got some serious problems. And, you know, in the way that we kind of expose ourselves to, it definitely makes a huge difference on our psyche, even if even if we're aware of it. Like, you can watch yourself slip into the rabbit hole and you're like, Oh my God, this is this is real, you know? Yeah, yeah, so true. And then, you know, I think even I'm the same way. So I'll try to eat healthy. And then I say today I'm I'm going to get some pizza or I'm just going to get a bag of chips and eat some. And and it almost feels like you're rewarding yourself, like, OK, I've been good.

6:12 So and I'm going to give myself this reward. And I think that's the wrong mentality because what you're actually doing, you know, it is not a reward. You're actually, you know, harming yourself in some way. So I think it I don't I agree. I couldn't live life without pizza. So, but at the same time, I think we have to, you know, change that mentality that like, OK, I'll, I'll be good. I'll, I'll stay off of Instagram for a week and then I'm going to go back and just like go crazy, you know, So it's, we really have to understand what we're doing here. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. That's I, I never even thought of it like that. And I actually, I bet if I implemented that, a lot of my vices would be a lot more in control, you know, but that's a, that's a great way of thinking of it. So, so tell me a little bit.

6:58 So, so you have such a, such a cool career. You've written such a wide variety of of, of books and, and even within the genres like you, there's so many different cross genres that you've kind of dive dove into. And the ones I'm really particularly interested in is like I mentioned Hollywood and either the history. And I know that you have a new book coming out that I want to talk a little bit about as well, which kind of falls a little bit more into the true crime, unresolved, unresolved crime world. Do you mind to just tell me a little bit about how you got into this whole world and what kind of inspired you? Yeah, I mean, since I was a kid, I was always fascinated by the cinema of my parents.

7:40 You know, it's interesting. I, you know, I'd like the movies that I saw growing up, but I just became really fascinated by this world, that it wasn't a world that I knew, you know, you know, watching these movies. And I remember being a kid because it was the days before YouTube and everything. So I'd have to wait until some of these movies were shown on television. And and, you know, sometimes they'd be at 11:30 at night and my mother would say you can't stay up that late. You have school in the morning. But like, I've got to see this one. I've never seen this one. This is this is Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. And, you know, it's it's one that's never, never shown. And I have to. And so, you know, she sometimes let me, not always.

8:22 But So, yeah, I had this fascination with with Hollywood and I didn't expect to grow up to write about it. I think when I was younger, I wanted to be after and I wanted to, I wanted to be in movies rather than write about them. But that was never going to happen. So I, you know, I, I pitched this idea, you know, I, I had never written a book before, but I pitched an idea and I did some freelance writing. So I started doing, you know, articles about old Hollywood figures and they got picked up. And then from there I was able to, you know, get a book contract and then and then start this career as a Hollywood biographer, a Hollywood historian, which, you know, when I was in high school, I didn't, you know, I didn't think that's what I was going to be, but it turned out to be in, you know, it's it's work that I love. So I'm very fortunate to do work and and at this point in my career, choose the subjects I do too. So that's really important because in the past, sometimes I've had to do, I've had to do projects that I were my ideas. And that's the hardest thing.

9:30 You know, for those of you who write you or your and your, your listeners try to write. It's always easier if you're writing about something you care about and you're interested in. You know, remember those assignments in school? We had to write about something. That otherwise it's blowing teeth. Care at all about. So yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm very fortunate. I think it's so I think it's really cool, especially because it at least for me, you know, I, I, you know, and again, I also wanted to kind of be in that world and I knew that I really wasn't ever going to be. I didn't want to move to California. I didn't want to play that kind of everyone kind of knows this. Well, I you hope not everyone, but there's a pretty sick game that is Hollywood that goes into get into becoming famous and becoming a star. And, you know, maybe some people avoid it. I'm sure they do.

10:16 And, you know, but I know that a lot of people have to kind of play that game and I wasn't really interested in it at all. And I was really devastated for a while because I thought this was my passion and like there was no other way to achieve it. And, you know, and then me and talking to gentlemen like yourself and talking. I had another gentleman, Sean Levy, who also wrote a bunch of great biographies about that, you know, great actors in Hollywood and in history. And and you find that people really can pursue their passions and find a way to make it work. And I think that's like it end of it, that end of itself is something so valuable because I teach high school, you know, and a lot of my and it's funny, it's actually in a in a Orthodox Jewish school and a lot of the students come from very conservative and, and it's, you know, not a conservative backgrounds.

11:04 And, you know, and, and it is the parents want them to kind of fit into. And so if you talk to them about anything like, you know, Oh well, career about if this, if I have students that have loved films in Hollywood without the years and, you know, and you want to encourage them without stepping on the family's toes. And I think that one of the ways to do this is to really like, hey, is you're not too young to find your own voice. If there's a if there's a movie you like write about, I'll give you credit for it. You know, if there's, if there's something that you enjoy that you want to come up with, do it, You know, And if we if we find a way to do your own expression of what, what caught you on fire about the about the film world to begin with, then maybe you could, you know, maybe you could live a life that is fulfilling in that kind of sense, you know? Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think really do have to encourage people where they're at.

11:48 And I've done the same thing. I teach, I teach at the university level and I'm also fortunate that I usually have upper classmen. So you know, you know, passionate, you know, juniors and and seniors. So I don't have to be as insistent that you have to do their for forms sake. You're going to I allow them to choose their topics because it's, you know, like I said, if writing about something you don't care about is so difficult and I don't really think it's a great way to learn either. I mean, you have to have a passion for what you're doing. And yeah, but you know, obviously it's also cultural. So, you know, I've had students who have, you know, you know, come from similar backgrounds. And so they're not comfortable writing about some of the things and I and they, and they worry like, oh, am I ever going to be, you know, just, you know, no matter where you are in life, there are things that interest you and can can be embraced. So I, you know, I encourage them to, you know, recognize their parameters, but then also do let your imagination go as far as they can.

12:57 Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think it's great. So let's so let's dive a little bit into some of the history now. I think I think I would love to do that. So, so we you want to start with your newest book or do you want to start with actually Tinseltown? Because I actually didn't want to ask you about that too. That looked, Yeah. Let's start with sure. Cool. Tell me a little bit about it please. Well, Tinseltown is was my first departure from strict biographies that I'd, I'd written, you know, I'd written about Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand and I, you know, enjoyed those books. They weren't always my ideas. You know, Hepburn was my idea.

13:38 Taylor and Streisand were my editors ideas. And I really want to do something that that I felt really interested to dig into. And there was this unsolved murder from 1922 that had kind of gone down in, in history and and many people would try to solve it in the past. And I said, you know, I'm more interested in how that murder transformed Hollywood. I'm less interested in trying to, you know, solve it because I think, right. You want to do. That 100 years later to solve it for certain right. So I'm, I'm more interested in, in telling the bigger story about what happened after that murder in Hollywood, which was that they created all sorts of structures to, you know, contain the scandal and how they, you know, you know, started the studio system, which was a top down power structure, vertical integration of the industry.

14:38 So I used the murder as a way in to tell that story. And I, I really, really enjoyed doing that. I mean, I came up with what I thought was a reasonable possible theory. I never said, hey, I've solved it. But I said, you know, what about if we look at it this way? But I didn't, you know, I never really straight from the idea that I was telling this bigger story about society and the culture and and specifically around how the American Film industry came out of that, that scandal to create what we now know as classic American cinema, you know, And so that it was really it was a great experience. I really loved being able to dig in in that way, you know, unfold a mystery as I was writing and, and that's what made me interested in the newest book.

15:33 Cool, cool. And what when you're doing research, you know, especially when you're taking such a pretty dramatic departure in genres. I know that, you know, obviously the, the, the research is research and homework is homework. But what you know, I guess when you're writing biography, it's a lot less put, you know, connect. I'm sure there's plenty of connecting dots, but you know, when you're trying to when you're observing A cause and effect and you know, and like the consequences that are outgrowth of cause and effect. I think there's a lot more, there's a lot more information and you kind of have to just kind of sort it together and try to put it together. What's the difference in terms of the research that you had to do and what how'd you go about conducting it as opposed to the biographies? Well, dude, there, there are similarities. I mean, you know, one thing that I've always said is, you know, like, you know, there's a new biography out of some figure, whether it be, you know, Hollywood or political or historical.

16:29 And I always look at the sources. And if the sources most like in the footnotes, you know, the endnotes and if they're largely sourcing other published works, so other secondary sources, I have no interest in reading it because the research really determines what you're going to be able to say. So, you know, I'm, I, I, I will read other books on my subjects and, and reference them if they've got found something and I want to give them credit. But I, I, I, the majority of my, my, my sources have to be primary, have to be stuff that you'd never think of to when you want to research someone's life. And in this case, you know it both in the biographies, but even more so in the true crime works that I've done. You really have to, you know, send out as wide a net as possible.

17:25 You have to look at census records. You have to look at military records. You have to. And what's so great now, which is not wasn't the case when I first started writing, is that we have 10s of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of newspapers that have been digitized. You can search these for like the most obscure mention of your person or your incident. And, and, and sometimes that one little mention can tell you, you know, take you in a whole new Ave. research. So it's really about being as exhaustive as possible. In the old days, I think when people would do biographies, they would they would rely on newspaper clippings which weren't digitized.

18:13 You're only getting what the person kept And and then interviews with people and interviews are are vital to any book, right to any, any project. You need to talk to the people who are involved or who knew people that were involved. But memory and we can this is a whole other discussion. We can talk about memory is this unreliable thing that one person can remember something one way and another person is going to remember it another way. And often times those memories change as a year. Years go on and tell. The story, yeah. And yeah, and it's, and I, you know, having interviewed a lot of Hollywood type people, they're born to embellishment. So they'll say, oh, yes.

18:59 And then we went, we did this. And I'm like, oh, you did. I mean, it doesn't make, you know, here's the record. It shows you we weren't there on that night. So how do you know that? Well, you know, and so you have to be really careful. So I actually think the the archival research is more important than the interviews. The interview's important, but you need to do the archival research first so that when you get to the interviews, you can kind of cut the bullshit. You know you can figure out what's what's real and what's not. That's really cool. It's really, really cool. It's smart. Yeah. That's yeah, I know. I I, I was kind of hoping that was just a me problem that I, that in my memories, you know, that the more I tell a story, the more it changes.

19:41 And, you know, my wife will have called me out, you know, be like, you know, you told a story a little different than last time. And I'm like, yeah, I think last time you said it was, you said it was half an hour later, something like that, you know, but. Yeah, and then eventually start thinking it was, you know, and you know, I, my, my sister has a much better. Detail memory than I do. So like we'll say, I'll say something about, you know, did we ride the, the bus home from school? And she was like, yeah, we did. And don't you remember? Because I always stopped here and so and so always sat in front of us and I'm like, no, I have no memory of that. So it's really great to have people have memories like that. But oftentimes, and like, there's no way I can what, I, I can't judge whether her memory is correct or not either, you know?

20:27 So memory, it's just a funny thing and it's different between different people. Definitely, definitely. So tell me a little bit about the power dynamics that did change as a consequence of this murder that the unresolved murder in Hollywood, because there's a great book that I there's a pretty good book, but the information was great. The the way it was written was not my speed, but called easy was Easy Rider Raging Bull and it talked about the shift in power dynamics in Hollywood over the course of the decades. Right. So from producers to directors to actors to now studios today, you know what, what was the structure before? And of course, in the 20s, filmmaking was a very different world, you know, So want to elaborate a little bit just for, you know, just to kind of teach audience. Yeah, sure.

21:19 The the book you mentioned, easy writers, Raging Bulls is actually a book about the tail end of the period of that I was describing that came into existence. So the structures are similar and the So what what came into existence in 1922 was hold, hold on a second, I've got a right in here. Back, yeah. Yeah. So the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was about the period that came after the period that I described coming into existence in the 1920s, which was a period of time in which of consolidation.

22:08 The, the film industry was very new at that point. And it was the Hollywood was sort of the Wild West. And so you had all these independent players and people were making films and, you know, and then they would just, you know, drive them over to the, to the theaters to show them. And there was no top down control, you know, and, and distributors were different from exhibitors and producers were different from the actors. And and by the time of the murder, the movie studios were coming to existence and they were making a ton of money, more than they any they ever possibly imagined. So there were big stakes here and the, the guys who were running the, the, the studios realize that unless we get some control over this industry, any little scandal like this or big scandal like this could take us down and then we lose all this money.

23:07 The federal government was threatening to step in and control the industry. You know, there was even a period of time where people were, some people were pushing for state control of the of the film industry. So we would have, it would have been like the Soviet Union, right, controlling our our student or chat. Yeah. And because at the time they were saying that they were the film industry was breaking antitrust laws and all that. So, so, so the guys who were putting this together realized, hey, we should vertically integrate the industry. We should, we should not only make the films, but we should distribute them.

23:52 And then we should own the theaters that show them so they, you know, they were essentially building trusts for themselves. But it, it created this this factory system by which movies were made for the next 40 years. And it was incredibly successful. And even though it stifled some voices, like women's voices, before this, women were we're working as producers and directors and writers and under the studio system, of course, it becomes an old boy network and and women are are reduced to, you know, lower, lower positions of authority. So but it, you know, it really does create these, you know, amazing, beautiful films that still stand the test of time, even though they're very different from the way films are made today.

24:43 But they, you know, people still go to watch old films and, and so there was there was benefits and good things. But by the 1960s, you know, and, and so I should just back up and say that the, the scandals, that wasn't just the scandal of William Desmond Taylor's murder that I was writing about, but there were other scandals as well, notably Roscoe Arbuckle, who was, you know, the biggest comedian in town, both both monetarily and physically. He was known as Fatty Arbuckle. And he, he was charged with manslaughter and rape. And so he, you know, his death occurred, I'm sorry, his arrest occurred right at this time of Taylor's, Taylor's murder.

25:30 So it was all of this criticism of, of the morals of Hollywood and, and mostly led by very conservative Protestant ministers, later joined by Orthodox students and Roman Catholics and insisted that the movies be cleaned up. And so to avoid that, the student, the studios create, they're all their own in house, not so much in house, but it's, it's a form of self censorship where this, this, this production code administration that they set up and hired the guy to run it would, would have the power to oversee filmmaking rather than the federal government.

26:19 So all of this structure, all this corporatization of the film industry lasts, as I said, for 40 some years. And, and then by the time of the late 1960s, with all the social uprising and turmoil and, and, you know, changing values and a generational change and all of that, we see the breakdown of that structure, which then creates the, a new renaissance of films. So the films in the late 60s and 1970s are, you know, some of the best films ever made. And, you know, so it's really in both cases. But that book you mentioned and, and the book I wrote is a really about how the, how Hollywood structured itself and, and how it supplanted 1 system and created a new one, you know, and now of course, Hollywood's very different yet again.

27:06 But you know, it's you're reverting back to that demo democratization of, of, of creating film. Yes, yes, there is there. There certainly is more of that, though. I think there's still you know what what gets made is, you know, you know, and that's a whole nother discussion. But you know, what gets made for theaters, you know, up until very recently, it's been just super hero movies and, and, you know, it's which eliminates a whole section of the audience And, and then, you know, the more complex, nuanced work is being done, you know, for streaming. So, you know, it's, but it's all really the same thing, you know, and it's, it's just about different platforms and different buying and selling.

27:56 Yeah. Yeah, I, there's a there's a great book by a gentleman, Ben Fritz, who I mentioned this actually last time a couple episodes ago too, because I'll make a brief. But he, he made that same argument that you made and said that the, the, the fundamental difference between the movies that are getting made today as opposed to 20 years ago is that we have a global market now that the studios have to tap into. And so most of the films that go to theaters have to be translatable to an audience that doesn't necessarily understand the nuance of American culture. And whereas the streaming services, they care about subscribers, not about the box office. And so they want to make content for any, you know, from from Orthodox Jews to Catholic priests to, you know, and, and they want, they want everyone everywhere to be watching all their content all the time. And so everything kind of gets greenlit as a consequence or which isn't, you know, I actually don't know if I had necessarily have a problem with that, especially when you have the beauty of what you call it of a curated algorithm. You know, and I mean to know really how much content Netflix has, go to five different friends house and look at what the say, look at their Netflix cut feed and see how different you don't even know that half this stuff is on there, you know, and they just keep it.

29:10 Going Yeah, yeah, I'm old. So my friends are always saying have you seen this? No, I never heard of that one, you know, but it does because it hasn't come up in my, you know, my feed. But yeah, but that's where you find new stuff too. And and I agree. I think what's so great is it is more of a democratization of voices. And it's also, however, I think it's also problematic for those who are creating that content because, you know, if you look at it's why the writers, you know, the Writers Guild has been, you know, struggling because they don't, they don't get paid what they used to do.

29:50 And they're, they're, they're, you know, I remember when I was a kid, a new, new series comes on and you get 36 episodes a year, a season. You're lucky, you know. And so that means, you know, 24 episodes aren't there that writers might have gotten paid for, you know, So that's really, that's really the struggle with this new model is that it's, you know, for writers and and also for actors in a certain, to a certain degree, they're they're certainly not getting to pay. But meanwhile, Netflix and other streaming services are pocketing huge amounts of money, but they're reluctant to share that with the people who are creating that content.

30:35 So that's the thing I think we need to be looking at. Yeah, and I've heard there's a great podcast that I listen to called The Town with Matt Bellamy. Matthew Bellamy. It's great. It's half an hour a couple times a week about the purely the business of Hollywood. And one argument that he makes, he's like, listen, Netflix makes a ton of money that these that a lot of the artists don't see the back end of, but Netflix pays them a lot more upfront and they're all and, you know, and, you know, often 2-3 times what their typical fee is. And they say, you know what, like, listen, you can, you can try to have your cake and eat it too. And by the way, I'm not even necessarily making an argument for Netflix because again, at a certain point there's enough money to go around in my own philosophy about these kind of short term business decision making, decision make, you know, choices that companies are forced to make on a quarterly earning basis, I think is a little absurd for the well-being of any long term company. But, you know, regardless, I, I think that, I think that I think that the democratization of this information also comes as a consequence, I think of a collapse of, and this happening everywhere, a collapse of trust and institution and an appreciation for institution.

31:48 And I think that we almost had a generation, we skipped a generation of leaders. It almost feels like, you know, whether you're looking in Hollywood, we're looking at politicians, whether you're looking at, you know, the youngest, you know, like the average A list actor, writer, celebrity, you see, they're not 2530 years old. You know, you don't even. Have 40, not even 40. Yeah. I mean, and so like, you wonder, like, hey, is it that no one's interested B Is it that the people are not giving up control? And like, you know, I mean, the biggest problem that Disney, for example, has always had for the had has had since the 90s or even earlier was a predator with predecessors, you know, was that Michael Eisner couldn't, you know, couldn't hand the reins over to anyone. And Bob Iger won't pick anyone to hand the reins over to. And, you know, and well, even they didn't have a plan after Disney, you know, So like, I think that that a big problem comes with a lack of a lack of appreciation for the future generations and to try to mold and shape new young leaders. And then you kind of, and then that that system falls apart. And then a new and then the young people pick up the pieces and they do it in their own kind of language and they do it in their own kind of way.

32:58 True, very true, 100% true. And I think part of that the issue is that there were just so many damn baby boomers. I mean, there's just, you know, there was. So I mean, they're, they're just way too many of them, you know, they just keep holding on. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I guess I'm Gen. X. So we're the ones who kind of like didn't get up, you know, after that. And but and but then you get to millennials and and Gen. Z and it's like, you know, they're still they're waiting. Yeah. So that's totally true. And yeah. And and it's it's unfortunate. I also think it's because, you know, this is bigger, this is the biggest conversation, which I'm not sure who we want to get into, but you know, this kind of normalization of greed that it's really all about profits and you just make as much as you can and, and you yourself and you keep it and you know, it's it's, I don't know if that's, you know, I think it's that's a problem.

34:02 I mean, you know. I think it is too. I think it is. Everything, you know, everything in life now is, you know, monetized to the NTH degree. It's there's no longer like we're going to give this to our consumers or we're going to give this to our customers because they've been loyal. You know, there's always something, you know, the whole frequent flyer miles on interference, it's a whole big scam, you know, and it's, it's just too bad because I'm old enough to remember a time when, you know, there were giveaways at stores, you know, for our loyal patrons this week. Come on in and you all get a free blah, blah, blah. You know, if they do that now, there's always something attached. You got to give me your e-mail or something so they can, they can hound you or something. You know, it's, it's really true. And so these baby boomers just, they're not ready to give up because they want to keep killing those Clippers more and more and more anyways.

34:53 Yeah, and it's a shame because you would think that at a certain amount. Listen, I'm freaking 30 and I know, and I realize it's already, but you're not taking anything with you anyway. You know, I like that. You know, you're not taking anything with you. And the only thing you're leaving behind is a world that's, you know, having a little bit of a harder time. And that's that's what it seems to me. Yeah, it's, it's sad because too, I've been working on some, some, some some other writing projects and, you know, I was writing about my grandfather who, who, you know, as a kid, you know, there were no cars. I mean, there were cars, but he lived in a farm area, so there were no cars, you know, for him to use. And, you know, and he saw the world is constantly getting better and better and better and better. You know, suddenly there were vaccines and they were, there were, you know, measures to keep pollution and, you know, in check all this stuff.

35:47 So he saw the world getting better and better. And, and my father too, to an extent that we lived a long, long enough to see the world starting to go down. What what about today? I mean, generations are making less than what their parents made. That's the first time in history, in American history that that's happened, that children are making, you know, grown adult children are making less than what their parents, which is just wrong. Yeah, and it's yeah. And I've, you know, I've been, I've been thinking about this and talking about I just bought, I bought my house for the first time and you know, I called my dad before I did. I'm asking his opinion on whether he thinks a good idea. And you know, I have to put X amount down and just how much it is like, what do you think? He's like what I think he goes, I was 25 and I bought, you know, my first house for 150 grand.

36:32 I was making $90,000 a year. And you know, in my salary and, and typically speaking, whatever. And by the way, and also to be fair, for example, my, my, my own, my, my, my mom, the house, my mom grew up and my grandparents lived in it. My grandfather bought it. He was a high school teacher. But it's a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bathroom house that five people lived in, you know, and so at the time, I think that expected. And so there's one shower for everyone to use, you know, and there's one bathroom, there's one downstairs that was like a little closet and that was in like, I think that our yardstick have also changed a little bit to be a little fair, but that doesn't necessarily but like, but again, if someone's making $100,000 and the average cost of a house is $600,000 in America like that, how does that how do, how do the numbers make any sense?

37:16 And then the issue becomes, and I've heard this put so eloquently, people playing the game that have they've been told is what you need to do to succeed, are now stuck with debt and stuck with credit card debt to it, you know, tuition debt, whatever, whatever you have. And then they're like, what's the point even playing this game if you can never get out from underneath it? And So what do you do? You, you, you turn your, do you turn to your own system? And I think that I think that this happens one way or the OR the other. I'm a huge fan of 60 cultures. I don't know if you can, I have a bunch of posters behind me from, you know, the dead and brothers and, you know, and Woodstock. But one thing that I've noticed is that people that experience hardship explode creatively.

38:01 You know what? And you know, black music has been freaking incredible throughout America, you know, throughout for in history and you're and you're like Blues, like what you know, like and it doesn't happen every. Every music form has its roots in African American culture, whether it be jazz, rock'n'roll, balloons, I mean all of it. Soul, I mean all of this. You came from the hard, you came with a hard time and the hippies that were rejected by their families and rejected by their parents and post World War 2 and McCarthyism and all of that. And they're just like, I don't want this. And you get the Grateful Dead, you get Jerry Garcia, you get the almond. I mean, so so I think that we're seeing, we're hopefully going to see something similar. And it's interesting because even musically we're seeing that kind of revival.

38:48 There's Billy Strings kid who's my age is, is on fire. I mean, and, and, and he's bringing an American spirit to back to the country that is really, really special and really unique and I'm really excited about it. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the irony, of course, is those baby boomers who stood up against the system and, you know, change the system are now are, you know, they were the hippies and now they're the people holding on to power. That's right. So if your generation is changing the things, then you got to remember that 40 years down the road. It's OK. It's time to, you know, let other people in. That's right. That's right. So, so let's talk a little bit actually. You know, one interesting closing point that my, that the gentleman Sean that I interviewed, the other biographer talked about was the difference between writing a biography about someone that's alive and someone that's dead and, and how tricky it could get when you're writing about someone that's alive. Have you found that that to be?

39:43 Have you found that to be a problem yourself? Yeah, I always say that my I prefer my subjects to be long dead, OK? Because you know, you don't run into issues when I was writing. So 2 of this, my subjects were, were still alive when I wrote about them. Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand, probably probably the reason they weren't my choices. Those were choices for me. Elizabeth Taylor was very ill at the time and you know, she, everyone thought she was going to be gone by the time the book came out. She wasn't. She hung on. And the, you know, I did talk to her people who said, you know, she's not well enough to talk to you. You can talk to her kids, but I'm not sure they'll go on record, you know, because every, you know, nobody want to say anything because she was at the end of her life. So ultimately it didn't really affect the book too much, you know, but I did have to take that into consideration with Streisand.

40:48 I knew that, you know, she's she's got some control about her, her life. And, you know, God bless her for it. I mean, you know, she's not going to just allow anyone in. And so I decided early on, I told her to my editor, I said, this is not a full life biography of Streisand. This is a this is a biography of Streisand up until the point she first becomes famous, which is in funny girl on stage. So basically my book ends in 1964. She's, I think she's 22 years old. So I just do that first piece. And, and when I talked to her, her people, they were kind of like, oh, OK, that sounds fine. And, you know, even after I finished the book and her manager sent me a note and said, oh, I'm so glad you found some of those early recording sessions and, and performances she gave.

41:46 We had, we didn't have those on our list. So I I'd like to think that when she wrote her memoir, she used some of that. But yeah, but so that was my thing. You know, she's still alive. She's still very vital. She's still very involved. So I'm not going to, I'm only going to go up to that period when she becomes Barbra Streisand. In fact, that's what the the book is called becoming, you know. Hello, gorgeous. Becoming Barbra Streisand. So before that, she was just Barbara with two, as you know, in. Yeah, I was from Brooklyn. She was just this kid and, and, and that allowed me to really get into her, her humanity. You know, you really sympathize with this young girl who comes to Manhattan wanting to become this big, big star.

42:32 She's not conventionally attractive. Her mother's always put her down or she does it, you know, she makes it and it's pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah, that's a common theme. You see a lot of that. You see a lot of. And again, I guess, you know, you almost have that like on a cultural level, like, you know, we started with music. And you also have this on a personal level that people that kind of go through this, these challenges and often, you know, torments at the hands of their own parents, you know, would, you know, explode into something else. And, and this greatness is, is beautiful, but it's so hard. It's so devastating and heartbreaking to see where it has to come from, to see the place that, you know, like I complained that my writing has been awful since I got married, you know, because, you know, and maybe in 10 years from now, I'll be a little bit better. But, you know, like while you're writing in my early 20s or, you know, mid 20s when I had no idea what I was going to do with my life and where I was going.

43:24 And every day I felt I was lost was a lot better than being a family man with two kids sitting in my house and working on a podcast. You know it's. Yeah, it's true. I mean, great art comes from struggle. And yeah, and, and, and I think that's been the case with with all of my subjects. It's, you know, understanding the the factors that influence them at a very young age, you know, helps define their personality going forward. You know, that's, that was true for Katherine Hepburn, It was true for Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, I mean all of these Marlon Brando. So, you know, those were those early experiences shaped who they're going to become and then consequently their work.

44:12 Definitely, definitely. I want to ask you about Marlon Brando for sure and loose Marlon Brando loosely. But I think a bigger question that you can kind of take your you could navigate this space however you feel like is I'm trying to teach my students how to appreciate movies that are not in the last made in the last five years, you know, and one of the things that helps is to really explain the humanity either behind the characters or the stories or the actors. And a lot of times you don't even understand what makes someone you know. So like, you know, you hear the name Marlon Brando don't really IA lot of kids, unfortunately have a very short generational memory and no one even knows who he is. So you want to tell me a little about his influence and who he was and what about him made him, you know, so greater than life and just like this permanent mark of Hollywood? Yeah.

45:06 I mean, he's, I mean, he was a transformational figure for Hollywood. And I think part of that was because he had no real desire to be a star. I mean, most of these people that I've written about, whether it be Hepburn or Streisand, they wanted to be stars, you know, and they were going out there to get it. And whereas Brando really had no interest. He he was, he came to New York because his sister was was acting in New York and needed to get away from an abusive home, home life. And so he comes to New York and kind of as a Amalaric, he takes these acting lessons and his his teacher was one of the great acting teachers of all time, Stella Adler. And she just but Oh my God, this guy, he can do anything, you know, and and he's what's so natural about it. He never had an acting.

45:57 He'd never had had an acting lesson before that and certainly had no desire to be an actor, but he was just so good. And so she really begins pushing him or not, I don't say pushing him, encouraging him to to pursue acting as a career. And so he's kind of like, yeah, this could be, this could be fun. And and he he really gets into the work. He's, he's, he was nurtured by a very liberal, progressive Jewish community. And you know, he was, he was actually in the first play, play of flags Born, which was about the creation of Israel and he was passionate about that. And, and so he, he, he kind of correlated acting and performing with the betterment of society, right. So one of Stella Adler's lessons was an actor uplifts. An actor is there to inspire people, not to bring them down. And, you know, an actor works for justice. So in our acting, we are, we are attempting to bring justice to the world.

47:04 So that is that's Marlon Brando's approach to acting and why he's he pursues this. And his early work is like that. He works with Elliott Kazan and he works with Tennessee Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire. And he feels like, OK, I'm doing something now that's contributing. It's making a statement and, and then but he quickly realizes, though, that Hollywood doesn't care about any of that. Hollywood simply cares about making some money. And so they they're, you know, they ask him to go, you know, press junkets with and talk to, you know, gossip columnist and all of that. And he he very quickly begins to back away from all of that. Like this is not what I thought acting was supposed to be. But meanwhile, he's up on the screen doing things that have never been done before.

47:50 He brings such a naturalness to acting. He's, he wasn't really trained in the studio system. So he's, he's bringing a whole different perspective of acting and, and what's real and what's truth to the screen. And he's, he's amazed. I mean, you, you, you watch any of those early films and he you can see why he just blew people away because he's so real, so honest. And and yet eventually, as he keeps going on, he becomes much, much more disillusioned with Hollywood and the machine and, and at certain point actually thinks I'm I'm done. I don't really want to do this. He becomes friends with James Baldwin, the writer and says, you know, I wish I was more like you, that I was actually, you know, writing about things and and, you know, working on things.

48:35 He becomes involved in the anti segregation movement, the desegregation movement and, you know, other civil rights issues because that was really important to the community that had nurtured him. And eventually it gets a point like, I don't want to do this anymore. And but people keep throwing all this money at him. Like you've got to stay here. We need you. You're the greatest. And so he gets a point by the end of his career, like, OK, I'll make these this movie because they're going to pay me a lot of money and I'm going to use it to fight against capital punishment or I'm going to use it. He was an early environmentalist. He he was one of the first people to talk about climate change in the 1990s. So he was using that money for good things, you know, you know, certainly on Indigenous rights, he was, he was very vocal about Native Americans and, and the, the experience they've they've been given by this country. You know, really in writing about him, I realized that I have to tell this story.

49:33 Not only the great actor, because he really was and he influenced a lot of the actors who came along later, but he was also somebody who just identified the the bullshit and say, like, Oh, acting is the greatest profession in the world. And we are. So, you know, if we're not, if as actors we're not serving others, then there's no point in what we're doing. You know, it's not, it's not about narcissism. And, and unfortunately, his. Yeah, it's enough. Right? Yeah. And his reputation later became that he was narcissistic because he didn't want to do things. I didn't want to do that. But it's really about him saying that's that's not genuine to me. That is, that's, that's about making money.

50:15 And that's not what I should be doing here. So, you know, he's a he's a, he is a transition transformational figure in Hollywood. But I think in more the ways than people, you know, automatically assume, you know, it was also about saying, you know, all of this. You know, he hated award shows. He says it's all these rich white guys clap themselves on the shoulder. Yeah, yeah, you did great job, did a great job. And he was like, I, I he's just not into it. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I didn't know that about him actually. That that's really that's great. I have to, I have to check it out. I, I got to learn more about him. I think one of the, one of the ideas that you mentioned, actually there's two things. Number one was that I was actually talking to someone about this other day.

50:58 I was on another show and we're talking about and he, you know, he's, you know, he noticed obviously that I'm wearing a yarmulke and then an Orthodox Jewish and he asked me off camera. Actually, we're talking a little bit about he's like, you know, I'm Jewish. I grew up in this conservative Jewish world. And I just want to know, you know, how you balance it because you seem like you like you seems like you, you know, you're Orthodox, but you seem like a pretty integrated guy into the rest of the world. And he said, you know, I personally have a hard time because there's so many, you know, examples of embarrassing behavior around the world, you know, around the world, the society. And I said, listen, I said you're completely correct. I said, you know, if I were to judge the, the religion of Judaism or any religion really based on the people as opposed to the ideals of the values, I wouldn't do it either, You know, and I was like, but I feel that way about America, you know, like I love America with the values.

51:49 You know, I don't love America because of the people that run the show. I like that. I love America because of what America represents and what the people that are living here strive to accomplish. And, and that seems like a really, and that seems like Brando really, really lived that too. And. Absolutely. Yeah, and, and I was going to ask if your, your opinion on the matter. Of course, being forced to, I have a very low tolerance, for example, for for doing things that I can't stand. And that tends to get us into self sabotaging habits. And it's a behaviors that consciously, subconsciously tend to harm ourselves almost as like a rejection of, you know, what it is we're participating in, you know, and we know that and we know that Brandon wasn't a particularly healthy human being towards the end of his life by any stretch of the imagination. You want to dive a little bit into that. Yeah.

52:38 I mean, you know, he's he was, he was emotionally scarred by his abusive father and then, you know, a neglectful alcoholic mother. And so that that goes with him for the rest of his life. He was never able to have a successful long term relationship. He went through a couple of different wives and there was never he, he was never physically abusive. There are no cases of him ever, you know, you know, harassing sexually any of his costars. He was always very good about that. But he could be emotionally so distant that his wives eventually couldn't take it anymore. And also some of his long term girlfriends like Rita Moreno, who's who's talked a lot about that. And he was not a great father because he had never had, he didn't have any of that modeling. He had a horrible father.

53:38 And so he he just said, I'm going to do, I'm going to, I'm just going to make sure I don't do anything my father did. So he never drank. You know, Marlon Brando never drank because he saw what alcohol did to both his parents. But he thought by doing that, that was enough. But it wasn't because he'd also never learned how to show his children love. And and so he was always very distant and as as life went on, you know, both his sisters were Alcoholics and Marlon didn't drink, but he ate and he became that was a food was his addiction. And so he ballooned hugely and, you know, had all sorts of coronary issues and high blood pressure and which is eventually what part of what what, what killed him.

54:26 So, yeah. So it goes back to what we're talking about his idea, you know, the early scars that were left in a childhood shape who we are. And so even though he had all of these moral ideas and idealistic goals in life, he wasn't able to translate them personally, which is really sad because he he had a whole slew of children by wives and girlfriends. And, you know, so we had a whole bunch of kids, none of whom was ever really close to him. Yeah, yeah. What's I I remember there was a movie I saw. Maybe it was a was it a comedy? Was he in the movie The the comedy knock off with with shoe?

55:09 Who's the actor? Ferris Wheeler. Yeah. Broderick, Yes. Yeah. Depression. And that was one of the that movie. He was enormous in that movie, right? Probably enormous. I mean, he's, yeah. I mean, in some of his later movies, he's enormous. And in that movie he's pretty good because he actually liked script. But some some of his later movies, he's just phoning it in, you know. So because he's just like, hey, yeah, I'm going to take the money so that I can go and create an aquaculture farm in Tahiti, you know, where, you know, I want to, I want to fund this school of Native Americans or something like that. You know, it's like he was never, he never bought himself things. He wasn't like, he was like.

55:53 That's really beautiful. I didn't know that about him. That's awesome. Yeah. So let's now let's get to Black Dahlia a little bit after. It's an hour. Yeah. That was related. Let's talk later. Yeah, so I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm really glad you, you know, we talked about it because it's coming out soon. I'd like, like Tinseltown is a true Crime Story. So Elizabeth Short was murdered in 1947 in Hollywood. She was not an actress. She just was there because she wants to see what it was like to live out there for a while. And her death, because it was very gruesome and very sadistic. It it kind of well, she was her body was found in a in a in a vacant lot and it her body had been cut in half.

56:41 She had been drained of all blood and she was given a Glasgow smile. So, you know, like a Joker smile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all sorts of mutilations. Yeah. So, so yeah. So, so consequently, it became this sensational crime that the media just jumped all over. And, you know, the newspapers in Los Angeles, there were five of them at the time, all competing against each other. And they, you know, one of the editors later said we sold, sold more papers about the Black Dahlia than we did about Pearl Harbor. So, I mean, it was, you know, and, and so it was the press that gave her that nickname, the Black Dahlia. She never, she never wore black clothes. It was just the movie.

57:26 The blue Dahlia had just come out and she had black hair. So somehow she becomes the Black Dahlia. I go into that in the book about how that could have come about. But over the years, she's been, you know, she's been cast as a sex worker or, you know, an aspiring actress who was trying to get a part in the movie or, or she was like working with gangsters, you know. And the thing that that struck me early on in this was, you know, first I want to, I want to tell this story and again, in a bigger way, I want to look at the what's going on socially. You know what, you know, this was after World War 2, right after World War 2, where, you know, demographic ships, ships were happening and, and all of this. And so I wanted to set her story within those that social context, but I also realized that I needed to try to rescue her because, you know, she was none of those things that I just described.

58:20 You know, she was just a young woman who decided to drop out of school, out of high school with her mother's permission and go explore the world. And, you know, people say, well, if she had stayed at home, she never would have been murdered. Well, yeah, sure. You know, and and you know, or, or, you know, she must have been, you know, immoral or, or, or sinister in some way. But they don't say that about young men who kind of say I'm going to go explore the world. You know, they make movies and write novels about guys like that Huckleberry Finn, you know, it's or Tom Sawyer, you know, who go off. And I'm going to go see the world. I'm going to live by my wits.

59:03 And, you know, if I have to con somebody to get a little, little money, I'll do that. And and you're you're kind of seen as these all American. Romanticized. Yeah, exactly. Very romanticized. And and yet they didn't do that for Elizabeth Short because she was a woman. And so she was, by implication, responsible for her own death. That was, that was been the, the, the, the, the unstated message in all of the previous books about her movies that have been made about her. And I decided I want to tell a different story that kind of humanizes her, brings her back as to who she was. You know, the only person responsible for her death was the person who did it. And, and I, you know, and again, I have a theory or a couple of theories on who may have done it. But again, like Tinseltown, that's not the point of the book.

59:50 The point of the book is to recreate that period of time and set her murder within that. Yeah, that's really cool. It's really, it's a really fun and and and and ambitious idea. How did you become familiar with the case to begin with? Because I never heard of it. Yeah, a lot of people, you know, it's funny, you know, I we, you know, people of my generation, we grew up with it because our parents had been around for it and it was like a big thing in their lives, right. But yeah, a lot of younger people haven't heard about it because it's it'll be almost, it's almost 80 years since she was killed. And but, you know, in in Bride, De Palma made a movie about it in nineteen, 2006, I think. So it was still kind of, it was still kind of current then.

1:00:33 Yeah, I so I'd heard about her for for years, but like most people, I had heard those myths and kind of absorbed them. So when my editor said, you know, what's another true crime that you could do, Well, let's see if we can repeat the success of Tinseltown. And I was like, well, I don't know. I mean, and I said, well, of course the Black Dahlia has been done a million times. He said, yeah, but never, never write. And I'm like, huh? And so I go into it thinking, I'm going to find out about this young woman who was like some gangster's girlfriend or, you know, was this high class call girl or something like that and wasn't like that at all. She was just there with some friends. You know what? Hey, let's see Hollywood this time, you know? And you know, so that was, that's what pulled me in. Yeah.

1:01:19 And what was the, what was the research like there? Was there a ton of archives and records and stuff? And it is easy enough to kind of string it all together. Like, how come it hasn't been? Was it not done well until now, you think? Right. Because of the enormous amount of cultural stigma that was associated with her, you think? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that's part of it. I think it's also because previously everybody wrote about it, wanted to say I saw the Black Dahlia case. Yeah, Yeah. Even though we don't have access to the information and the evidence that the original detectives had that that evidence is still locked up in the opposite of the LAPD. Yep. Have. You tried buoying it? Or have you ever done for this? Oh yeah, Oh yeah.

1:02:00 But because it's still considered an open case, they don't release those records if it's still considered open way after 80 years after 80. Years. That's a. That's a problem, man. But that's. Way to to break trust. Seriously. Break trust is by saying everyone's dead associated with this, but we're still not going to tell you what happened. Right. Yeah, I mean, her her mother lived to be 96 years old and died without ever seeing the information they had. So. But one good thing was I mean, that's what allowed me to write the book was the the District Attorney of Los Angeles of Los Angeles when the when there was a big blow up at the LAPD and there was, you know, some corruption going on all that the DEA stepped in and took over the case. And I asked for that, you know, I FOIA or and they sent everything to me.

1:02:54 So I have all of the district attorneys. So they're they're they're probably available. Anybody wants them can change, can just go get them so that I was able to build the case, but because that have really allowed me to get in to this this case and figure it all out. And there's literally thousands of names that I had to cross reference and all of that. The FBI files were also released to me. They're not as detailed, but you know, they're helpful. The but because there's all of these other records that I don't have that nobody has and they're within the LAPD. I could never it would be hubristic for me to say, oh, I've solved the case, even though the original who were pretty damn good, they were unable to do it and I don't even have the evidence that they had.

1:03:41 So instead, I I I put together based on what I've seen, there are two possible solutions to, you know, to this case of who The Who the killer may have been, but which will be more importantly. Yeah, it is. I come up with two ideas that, you know, give them what we have right now to me are the only two possible solutions. But but more, more of it. I kind of want to see what what it was like for what the society was like for women in this period of time. You know, during the war, during World War 2, they were forced into the workforce. They had to go in and fill the factories and the opposite. Yeah. Then the men come home, they're told, go back home and start cooking dinner and having babies again. And you know what, a lot of when we're like, no, we kind of like being on our own.

1:04:27 So we're going to stick around and do that. And that was a little bit short. She's like, Nah, I don't want to get married right now. I want to go see the world. So it was it was reestablishing that part of her that was really important to me. Do you think that she was influenced by culture at that point? I mean, there was a great book I read called, I was reading called Wise Gals I have over here by Natalia Halt. And, and she wrote, and she wrote specifically about this topic of basically how the how, how women during World War 2 set up the structures and the bones for what would be the CIA slash. You know, it was previously the OSS. And and again, how you know, 1 morning ever wakes up and all the men are in war. The next morning ever wakes up and they're all home and then everything and then have like, like it's all wonderful. But now what?

1:05:11 It's the cultural repercussions to to having such dramatic change up so quickly. So was she, you think that she was influenced by, was there a lot of cultural influence at that time that was expressing, you know, female individuality and freedom and stuff like that? Yeah, I mean, the the people that she would connect with in her travels, the women she would connect with were men who were like her, who kind of like, you know what, we can do this, you know, and you don't have to rely on a man for that. And even though Elizabeth was very good at getting a man to buy her, you know, dinner, you know, she'd be sitting at the counter and then she'd make eyes and the guy would say, how you doing? So, well, I'm a little hungry and I can't afford it. Oh, I'll buy you a dinner. So, you know, but at the same time, she, you know, she could have gone home in any time, gone back to her mother's shit because her mother was very sweet and would have accept her to come home, but she didn't want to. She just keep kept wanting to see the world. And I think that was because she was with other women who were doing the same thing.

1:06:05 She would have, she would have definitely have seen women working in the war effort. Her sister was actually in the war in the the the waves, I think. And, you know, so she would have seen women part, you know, participating in the war effort. And I think she would also seem like, OK, now they're all expected to get married. I don't want to get married. So yeah, I think she would have been very aware of the cultural changes. Right. Yeah, that's really interesting. I was reading, I was reading a book. I couldn't even make my way through it, unfortunately called Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. And it's about just a whole slew of unsolved deaths that happened around this time around this time period, you know, post World War 2 leading into the 60s and 70s. And there there didn't there was not a day or two that would go by without some kind of bizarre death. And while, and what I actually liked about what I love about the way that you're presenting this information is you're saying, listen, we know we have a context that I would like to elaborate on.

1:07:09 I don't know the information. And part of what was a little off putting to me about the book was that the author immediately leaps to, feels like it leaps to a lot of conspiracies that when you like, if you have the potential for the simplest solution to be the case, a lot of times it could be it, you know, like Janis Joplin, you know, overdosing. Well, like, it wasn't a mystery that she was an addict and an alcoholic and severely depressed and, you know, had and had a whole slate of, of, of problems, problems that really needed to be, that went into her genius but also needed to be resolved. And like, yeah, that seems like a pretty simple, straightforward, you know, answer, but about, you know, saying, hey, I don't know what's going on.

1:07:51 I just want to fill in the context and see what's happening. Yeah, yeah. I have no patience for conspiracy theories, whether they're contemporary ones or really or historical ones. I think conspiracy. I mean, you know, yeah, you're right. Occam's Razor. The most, the simplest answer to a problem or a mystery usually is the correct one. And, you know, previous people who wrote about about this case would have all these elaborated tortured theories about, you know, it was all conspiracy. Well, somebody was paying off someone else and somebody. There's no evidence for that, you know, So, you know, I, I, you know, I often say that, that, you know, I often apply Occam's razor to, to my, in my book.

1:08:37 I, I actually reference that I, hey, look, here's the, the simplest solution. Sometimes the simplest solution might not be the solution, but much more often it is. So, you know, I think we have to keep that in mind. And, and there was still been so many crazy conspiracy theories. It's just, it's just there's one guy who's made a franchise about conspiracy theories, believes his father was the killer. And you know, but he was also the Zodiac Killer and he killed these other people. And, you know, it's a book after book about just crazy conspiracy theories. And you know it's. Imaginative. It's imaginative, but when you know, I think when it comes to actually understanding history or understanding people's intentions, I think a lot of times the simplest things are still the simplest things. Like you said.

1:09:27 How long do you think you typically write a book? Three to four years. Three to four years. Gotcha. And and what's your structure for doing it? Because I, you know, I was a creative writing in literature on major college and I always have a hard time with the long form writing and keeping track of a whole story in my head at one time. And I kind of get overwhelmed with the whole process. So how do you go around breaking down, you know, especially over the course of years? Do you have like, do you break it out into phases or into sections or how do you, how do you go about it? Well, first you do as much research as you can and you just have as much data, as much facts. And then in the sometimes that creates the structure for you like, oh, OK, this is about, you know, her wanderlust. And then this is about her father. And, you know, and you're able to kind of come up with, you know, a rough outline of how the story should go. And usually doing that, I suddenly get the idea, OK, that's where the book opens, you know, And because I love movies so much, I think very cinematically. So think about a movie like you always have that powerful opening scene that just grabs you and like, OK, I need that for my book.

1:10:39 So I need to have this powerful opening scene. And sometimes then you flashback or sometimes you jump forward or whatever, but that's you got to get that grabbing. And then and then once I've got that, I can usually imagine where it goes to. So you also need to have an ending eventually where you're going to go to because then everything else you have works towards that. You know, you're like, oh, wait, I'm getting sidetracked. I'm not, I'm not leading to that ending and don't want to go that route because that's going to take me in a direction I don't want to go. I want to head towards that ending. So, you know, it's really about having as many facts and, or if you're writing creatively or like fiction or, you know, memoir, I would also have this many ideas and I, you know, on the paper or on the computer screen before you actually start writing because then you can start linking them together. And are you organized about this or do you like to have a jumbo that you kind of sort out?

1:11:31 Yeah, I'm, I'm ridiculously organized. I mean, it's, it's like I immediately start cross referencing and, you know, keep an index and, and you know, I've got, you know, eventually have 4 huge boxes of material, but I know where everything is because I've created an index for that material. Yeah. And that's it's, it annoys people sometimes, but but it's also, I think it's also why I'm able to do what I do. I bet you do. It's the reason why I haven't done it, The reason why you have, you know, what are some, what are some passion projects that you would like to that you would like to accomplish? You think over the over the course of the next couple of years.

1:12:11 Well, I mean, I've really enjoyed writing these true crime stories because it really allows me to get into a bigger picture, more, more kind of intimate experience in people's lives in some ways and more people. And I'm also going to get, I'm also working on a project now that is much more, I guess it's more like a memoir. And I guess I'm getting to the point in my life where I can look back on it, you know, that's I've had this life and really interesting about how my childhood was so different from the childhood of my nieces and nephews. And like, you know, and so I kind of want to get that down because I feel like if you don't get history down on the paper or on screen, it's going to disappear because every every young person thinks they're experiencing life for the first time and that, you know, nothing's really happened before of any interest, you know, and, and I was like that. And, you know, kids being born today are like that. They think, you know, oh, brand new slate, you know, and, but I it's important so you get this history down. I teach history.

1:13:17 So that's a cool awesome. What kind of history do you teach? American history, mostly 20th century popular culture and but how popular culture then intersects with everything else. So like the women's movement or, you know, all of that. So yeah. So you. So it's important to me as a historian to make sure that history is down. So I'm kind of like saying, Oh yeah, I didn't have this notable childhood. It was just pretty normal lower middle class child, you know, and but it was still interesting and they did things differently then than we do now. And I kind of like, I want to put that down so that it kind of gets. What are some things you think you'd like to preserve as far as like childhood or you know the youth, if you know if the world that you grew up with that we don't feel like we have today? Yeah, I think there was a there was a greater emphasis put on community because we were, you know, I think there was, you know, I was going to say it was maybe because I grew up in a smaller town, but it but I think that was true for friends of mine who grew up in Manhattan, for example, my age. I felt the same thing in their neighborhoods are, you know, very strong connections.

1:14:30 And, you know, our parents, I seemed were less helicoptery parents, you know, so I could be out until 9:30 at night and a summer night and come home. My mother said, where were you? Rather than like, I called everybody looking for you, you know, and but again, we hadn't experienced some of the horrors that parents have been the last 20 years, 30 years. So and not it's not that those things weren't happening, but they weren't, you know, so publicized. They weren't on your Facebook page, you know, and now parents are rightfully nervous. Where's my kid? Right. So I'm not criticizing that. But but but there was a just a more relaxed tone to to childhood. I mean, and also, but it was in a sense of anticipation that because you nothing was today, you know, instant gratification is just so easy.

1:15:26 You want to look at a scene from the Wizard of Oz, just go on YouTube and even look at it immediately. When I was a kid, the Wizard of Oz was on once a year and you you swap then and then you run a whole nother year before you saw it again. And so that was like that for anything. You know, the the Christmas specials, Charlie Brown, all of that comes up. It came once a year and for. Me. Yeah, it's like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I don't know, I mean, it's I'm not saying that that was better than today because I like I like the fact that, you know, when I got interested in movies as a as a teenager and old movies, like silent movies. Well, how else is like going to see a silent movie until like the the theater in Hartford, CT, where I lived, the suburb of Hartford, CT, I could drive to Hartford and you know, 16 year old and driving in my car to see this silent movie because I'm never going to see.

1:16:21 And again, now it's all on YouTube or, you know, wherever you can, you can, there's someone on Tubi and Netflix and all of that. So, and that's good. I like being, especially as a writer that I can just go look at it, not say, oh, how am I going to get a copy of this? But there was also something about it was more wonder, I think as as when I was a child, like, oh, wow, look with this and look what I found. And and that's different. Not especially better, but different. Yeah, yeah, I, I think that I have. I think that you're totally right. I think there's a couple of #1 I think that actually probably for better, you know, I guess critical back in the day, you could call it, you know, But to have when, when everything was kind of a shared embodied experience, you wanted to see The Wizard of Oz, you had to go to the movie theater.

1:17:09 And you go to the movie theater, you're watching it with 250 other people. And when you had that moment and you're watching some and you know, you have a couple of those kind of moments in modern day history. Like I was talking to a couple of friends this weekend and we're talking about what it was like in the movie theater when in The Avengers movie, you know, when they when they when The Avengers lost at the end of Infinity War. And like, you walk out of the movie theater and there's 350 people piling out from all these theaters and everyone's kind of coming together and it's just silent because no one knows like what hit them in the head, you know? And I'm sorry you lost your audio a little bit. I think. No, hang on. I'm going to pause it. And the other thing was that about about the parenting and about the freedom.

1:17:56 I was reading this great book called Jonathan Hate the Ancient Generation. And one of the thing points that he makes is that the generation that I guess I was at the tail end of was that parents looked at other parents in America like friends, you know, and like you go to the supermarket. If a kid got, if you lost your kid in the supermarket, another parent would come up to you and be like, oh, is this your child? Or like you go to a kid, Oh, you lost, where's your mom? And nowadays we're afraid to do that, you know, and, and right. But you know, again, not for wrong reasons. Like you say, you know, now it's parents against the world. It's not all of us together raising one kid or our family and our community doing that. It's, it's everyone to get it's, it's me against the world. And I don't know who's a threat, I don't know who's in danger. I don't know if anyone you know.

1:18:45 It's incredibly sad, but I mean, I'm just doing the math. You were five when 911 happened, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, so that generation grew up constantly. My niece was, was, I think she's your age, actually. And she, same thing. I remember walking with her. She's, you know, 6 and we're walking and she's so scared. It was a nice little street near my house. And the, the street light went out and she went, Oh my God. And I said, what's the matter? Shit. It's Osama bin Laden. And I'm like, I'm like, no, it's not hanging. It's not. But you know, that it was in their head, you know. And yeah. So, I mean, you grew up thinking that, you know, remember those. Well, you wouldn't remember, but I mean, but you know, today's an orange alert day, today's a red alert day today. And and then, you know, and it's been like that ever since with, with something else, COVID or whatever. So people are always and then, you know, yeah, it's all, you know what, how kids going to school, you know, you know, they're afraid they're going to get shot. I mean, it's, it's just.

1:19:52 It's terrible. Yeah, it's sad. It's sad. Yeah, one of the things I'm hoping for and I'm really hoping that this happens and we could kind of hopefully leave evolve with this as a positive note. But I think that I think that we became so comfortable, we forgot the spirit of adventure and youth that like was our country for so long. And like the spirit of like, you know what, a lot of times it's funny, I, I showed I'm not really even sure what I think about this at this point. But you know, the Age of Disclosure, which was this documentary about the Uaps and what they could potentially be UFOs. And you know, I showed them to my 9th graders, 10th graders and 12th graders, 12th graders, we're totally not prepared to hear it and just cut it out.

1:20:35 And like, on one hand, I get it. On the other hand, like, even if it's not true, the conversation is a fun, exciting conversation. Like where's the nation? Where's the enthusiasm? Where's the even if it doesn't exist, why don't we explore? Why don't we figure out how it might have happened? How do we like, like why we're not looking for more of that? And. Why didn't that happen? You know, why was that? Yes. You know, I just want to actually talk about that a little bit in the Black Dahlia book. I mean, that whole, you know, the atomic bomb had exploded and Russia was building it. And so there's this big paranoia and then suddenly there's this fear of UFOs. And so it came from somewhere. That fear came from somewhere. And we have, you know, we have to put that.

1:21:17 You know, I think it's it's an interesting moment in history. And yeah, but it's. But I do think you're right. I mean, I think what's important is to, you know, keep telling stories that, as Brando said, that that uplift that actually something to say. And they're not just Kardashians, you know, it's you know, I know that's an easy joke to make. But I mean, you know, that actually is has some value in how we see ourselves in our world and, and helps us understand our world kind of better and inspires the imagination and curiosity, you know, So that's, that's I think what we have to do as podcasters or writers or whatever is to, you know, have conversations like this. And bring the speed of adventure back to the country. I think that's really youth and adventure is really what we need.

1:22:08 And I would love that. Well, this is such a pleasure telephone where you can find your information and when your book comes out and and this was really so. Sure. I'm I'm at williamjman.com and you can pick up my book starting on January 7th. I'm sorry, January 27th, and I hope you'll and the black Dahlia. Yep, and you've I'm going to be appearing in in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, CA in Brooklyn, NY, Miami, FL. And you know when you come down. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's I think it's it's early February in in Florida. Yeah, remember it's off off on top of my head and then also Boston, MA.

1:22:57 So those are the ones that are set up for now. Awesome. Super exciting. Well, this is such a pleasure. It's so nice getting to meet you. Hopefully I'll meet in person when you're down here. I'll buy you a coffee or a beer if you drink beer and we'll, we'll have a good time I'm sure. But this is such a I'll post the the links to your stuff on the caption. Williams, thank you so much for the time it's. Such a great thanks for the conversation. Appreciate it. Of course. Take care. Bye, bye now.