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Episode 105—From Factories to the Front Pages with Jonathan Green
133 Plays7 years ago
"It was always the story behind the headlines I found more intriguing," says Jonathan Green (@jonathanjagreen on Twitter). This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the best artists about telling true stories where we dig into origins, work habits and process so you can be a better a better storyteller. For Episode 105 I welcome Jonathan Green, author of “Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal” to the show. Jonathan’s story of how he became a journalist is inspiring in that he didn’t have the traditional route. We talk about his origin Using Tape Recorders Making the extra call Forming relationships among sources and much, much more. If you’re not already subscribed to the show, please head over to Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, or Stitcher and subscribe so you can get this into your feed every Friday. Thanks to you, thanks to Jonathan for his time. Before you go on about your day, would you be so kind as to consider leaving a review of the podcast on Apple Podcasts? I’d love to see us get to 100 ratings or reviews and we’re almost halfway. It takes just a few moments, but those few moments help immeasurably. Also, if you head over to brendanomeara.com, not only will you find show notes for the episodes, but you’ll also be able to sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. In it I share my reading recommendations for the month and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @BrendanOMeara and followed the podcast @CNFPod on Twitter and @CNFPodcast on Facebook. You can also email me if you have any questions or concerns. If you’re struggling with your work, I’d love to help you out. So, you know, it’s been a while since I tried to get my wife to subscribe to the podcast and you know what she said: Okay, see you right here next Friday. Have a great CNFin’ week, friends. Promotional support is provided by Hippocampus Magazine. Its 2018 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction is open for submissions until July 15th! This annual contest has a grand prize of $1,000 and publication for all finalists. That’s awesome. Visit hippocampusmagazine.com for details. Hippocampus Magazine: Memorable Creative Nonfiction.
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Transcript
Creative Nonfiction Contest Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
Promotional support is provided by Hippo Campus Magazine. The 2018 Remember in November contest for creative nonfiction is still open for submissions until July 15th. The annual contest has a grand prize of $1,000 in publication for all finalists. That is cool. Visit hippocampismagazine.com for details. Hippo Campus Magazine, memorable creative nonfiction.
Introduction to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
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Speaker
And this is the Creative Non-Tiction Podcast, a show where I speak to the best artists about telling true stories, where we dig into origins, work habits, and process so you can be a better storyteller.
Who is Jonathan Green?
00:00:43
Speaker
For episode 105, I welcome Jonathan Green, author of Sex, Money, Murder, a story of crack, blood, and betrayal to the show.
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but before I get to that and I deeply apologize for Jonathan for this
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Speaker
We had to put him to sleep. We had exhausted every means to keep him comfortable and happy. Lots of tests to try to find out exactly what was wrong, to find out what was treatable, if anything was treatable, given his advanced stage. And like I said, we had exhausted everything. So I finally had to pick up his week.
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, he had a nice long life full of hiking walking
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He died at about age 14. We miss him so much and the house is eerily quiet. We lost both our dogs within 18 months of each other so we're just gonna take care of ourselves and do the things that having a dog sometimes prevents you from doing and go from there. So thank you very much for hearing me out on that. I appreciate it. I know it's not the happiest thing but you can't
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talk about a sick dog for a couple episodes and not bring it home, so to speak. So how do you segue from that to Jonathan Green's wonderful book and inspiring interview? Well, Jonathan's story of how he became a journalist is, like I said, inspiring in that he didn't have the traditional roots. So in this episode, we talk a lot about his origin, his process of using recorders,
00:02:46
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versus notebook, making that extra call, forming relationships and sources and garnering that trust and much, much more. If you're not already subscribed to the show, please head over to Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music or Stitcher.
00:03:02
Speaker
Soon to be Spotify, I hope, but we'll see. And subscribe so you can get this into your feed every Friday. So that's it, CNFers. Enjoy this show. Thanks for listening. Here's
Jonathan Green's Journalism Journey
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episode 105. So what was your backstory of getting into journalism and telling true stories? Well, I had a rather unorthodox path. I mean, I started writing for local newspapers when I was
00:03:30
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18 and straight out of school, really. And I left school with not many qualifications. So I did a whole range of factory jobs and things like that. And I wrote in my spare time. I mean, I used to write in the evenings. And and originally, I wanted to be a music journalist. So I started writing about bands that came and played in our area and
00:03:56
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you know, those pieces got published in a small local newspaper and then I actually get some things sort of published in a regional. And then from there, you know, I just, you know, started sort of freelancing a lot more and ended up with a staff job on a magazine in London called The Big Issue. And that's when I really started to work on
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um, social orientated journalism and, um, you know, started to age into sort of human rights stuff and that type of thing. And then it was a progression into crime and other things later on, you know. Yeah. What were some of your early growing pains as you were looking to, you know, earn your chops as a, as a reporter? Um, growing pains, gosh, that's a very good,
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question. I mean, I think just learning how to tell stories, I mean, you know, there's a very, you know, classic sort of local newspaper way of telling stories where you straight report the facts, but I was always
00:05:04
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uh, in crested in, you know, longer pieces. And it was always the story behind the headlines that I found more intriguing than just breaking news. Um, that was, that was never my, uh, thing really. Um, so I, uh, um, you know, started to sort of play, uh, play around with longer pieces. And I just really enjoyed the kind of freedom of that, you know,
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Speaker
What were some of the conversations you were having maybe with your editors as you were looking to try to stretch your legs and try to get beyond just the headlines? Well, it was always, you know, for example, I mean when I was working on the big issue in London, I mean I wanted to do a piece on
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these sort of camps in the UK, there were people sort of coming over from Europe and they were pretty much, I mean, you know, like it was like sort of slave labor, really. I mean, people were paid very sort of small amounts of money and they lived in very, very bad conditions. So, you know, I managed to convince an editor to let me work undercover at like one of these things.
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did that and I wrote a story about it. It was always trying to convince editors to let me do crazy stuff really. Yeah, that can be a fun and maddening bargaining thing I imagine. They don't want to necessarily waste the resources, but in order to get to the real crux of the story, it's like
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you got to make the deep dive. And so sometimes that's a hard thing to sell, I imagine. Yeah, but you know, but I started to have success assets. I mean, I remember doing a piece on outlawed motorcycle gangs in Scandinavia, and I've managed to convince sort of GQ magazine to send me out there and to write about that. And
00:07:13
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I think once you get one or two of these pieces under your belt and people can see that you can operate in foreign countries, even though Scandinavia was not that far from London at the time, I think you start to make a reputation for it and then I think people start to take you more seriously. But I think as you say,
00:07:41
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It's sort of trial and error in the beginning because you never quite know what's going to happen on these assignments. I remember once I did a piece on cock fighting in the Deep South and managed to, which is a felony, and we managed to get into an illegal cock fight on the Texas-Oklahoma border. And the guy I was working with got spotted as a
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photographer and you know, we got sort of marched out. And I think the last people who investigated a ring like that was left in the trunk of a car in the Louisiana bayou. So you know, it was it was particularly scary being marched out there. And yeah, there are all sorts of shady guys there. And
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you know, they told us to leave in no uncertain terms. And we were just amazed that we'd escaped a beating, really. But we got out of there and we made
Building Trust in Investigative Journalism
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it back. And I managed to keep hold of my notebook, although they took all the photographer's film and everything. So, you know, that's one of those cases where you get the story, but at the time, you know, you're not quite sure which way things are going to go, you know.
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In a situation like that, how are you taking notes so you're not sort of busted? Yeah, I mean I got really used to sort of using small kind of notepads.
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keeping them in my sort of pocket and then using the bathroom a lot and just scribbling down conversations or things of notes and then coming back again and trying to hold as much as I could in my head and then scribbling on the side and I got too used to working like that really for quite some time.
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Yeah, this raises the question of access and trust, whether it's getting into a cockfighting ring or the biker gangs in Scandinavia. So what were some of those initial steps in these stories of how you were able to maybe get a foot in the door of those underworlds so you can get in there and witness it?
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Yeah, I mean, it's just a lot of calls. It's like you really have to sort of call around and email and see who's willing to talk. And then you work through a series of stages to get to the people that you need to talk to. I mean, I found that, I mean, I did quite a lot of sort of stories in London about organized crime. And, you know, most of my best sort of crime contacts came through
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police officers who were, you know, very sort of skeptical of journalists. But once you were in their trust, then I think a whole landscape sort of opens up. And they sort of generally know who all the bad guys are. And they oftentimes, I mean, they're on speaking terms with them, you know.
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So through that, I was able to get access to a sort of counterfeiter in London who counterfeited money for drug gangs. And I was able to meet with him a number of times. I wrote a story about him. I was able to meet some people who steal cars for a living. I mean, I got that.
00:11:18
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the cop fighting story in the South, I think I went through some websites online for people involved in that type of thing. And I think, you know, the most important thing in winning people's trust is just to be completely straight out with them. I mean, you have to be completely, completely honest from the get go so that people realize that, you know, they can trust you.
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Yeah, for me, certainly, and I suspect for others, kind of a foreign concept of this type of reporting and relationship building. So you'll pardon me if I ask some very rudimentary or boring questions with respect to this because
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I'd love to know what maybe some of those conversations are are like when you're not necessarily. Reporting a story your but you are just calling to say hey you know you know what's going on got any got any news for me or you know what what those things are what those conversations are like when you're not like.
00:12:21
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Yeah, the moment writing a story. Yeah. Well, the most important thing I think is is never to start to pull out your notepad Until you absolutely know that things are okay So, you know, I just made sure I mean the first thing I would never do is pull out a notepad or a tape recorder and tell everything like being established and then you just you know, you just sort of chat in and
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general terms about things and, you know, things that you might have sort of a neutral interest in without, you know, talking about sort of stuff that's going to get anyone into any hot water. So, you know, I mean, it's not quite small talk, which I'm really bad at anyway. But it's, you know, it's more
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just getting to know each other and and you know people oftentimes they have a lot of questions about you you know who you are uh people are very intrigued with you know journalism and writing and how it works and you know they often have this misconception that everyone's a millionaire like who's a writer and all their stuff you know yeah and um you know yeah i think you just have to show that
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you know, that you're like them. I mean, I think actually what really helped me is after school, as I said, I mean, I worked, you know, a whole load of really dead end jobs. I mean, I worked in factories, I worked as a forklift truck driver, I was a garbage man. So I, you know, I always felt that, you know, I'd sort of seen life from many, many angles. And I feel I sort of, you know, understand,
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people in some sense who have to turn to alternative ways of making a living. I know the drudgery of a dead-end job, and I'm very sympathetic to people like you have to.
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you know, live a life like that to feed their
Green's Background and Motivation
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family. So I, you know, lots and lots of empathy. Never judge people, you know, always avoid that if you can. I mean, it's hard, you know, depending on who you're sort of talking to, but, you know, try to avoid that, you know.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, because I think a lot of sources or a lot of people, their hackles and defenses go up when they approach or are approached by a journalist. So if you can come at them and be like, oh, I'm a human and I'm recognizing that you're a human as well, and you talk about soccer or their family for a little bit, not get too chummy, but at least show that you're people trying to find your own way.
00:15:17
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Exactly. And I think so many times people have preconceptions of what a journalist is because not many people have met one. I remember meeting a
00:15:30
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police officer in Maine and we'd had this whole back and forth over the phone and email and we then truly met and you know yeah for some reason I think he thought I was some very like um snooty guy uh probably because of my accent I I should say and um and he was absolutely amazed that uh I would
00:15:55
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drink a beer with him. He thought, he said, really? You drink beer? I said, sure, I have a beer. And instead of breaking down all these barriers.
00:16:07
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Yeah, of course. That's brilliant. I think I read something that Howard Bryant, who's a prominent sports writer for ESPN and written several books. I think in the acknowledgments of one of his books, it might be his latest, The Heritage, which is an amazing book.
00:16:29
Speaker
Oftentimes it's like when the recorder's off or the notebook goes away and then they're hanging out for 10 or 15 minutes with a manager of the Giants or something and they're just chit chatting. That is where that little 15 or 20 minute investment and a little conversation that is authentic can actually yield lots of fruit maybe months or years from then.
00:16:51
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Oh, yeah. And also, I always find that as soon as you switch off the tape recorder, you say, OK, thanks a lot. Like, that's the end of the interview. People really open up and they start to say all the stuff that you hope that they would sort of say, say in the interview. So I like I've gotten really used to over the years turning off the tape recorder and then opening up my notepad because I know what's
00:17:20
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coming next in the small talk is that all all the best material is about to come. I mean, I think that the tape recorder can be a real sort of impediment to getting people to open up. And I remember, I think there was an essay by Gay Talise about how the tape recorder was like the sort of death of modern journalism, because as soon as it's there, because it's like a
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presence in the room and people sort of withdraw. So again, you know, I got really used to like scribbling tons of notes really fast, you know, which is one of my sort of handwriting now is illegible.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm so glad you brought up recorders in this context. This is a fun conversation I love to have with people about it because there are so many, there's like really, there's a hard and fast like two schools of thought on it. You know, there are the Talise McPhee, Lillian Ross,
00:18:16
Speaker
The people who totally swear, they're like, nope, they are intrusive. They are, despite the fact that they gather everything, they are not selective because they're taking everything. On the other side of that coin is because like me, like if I'm taking notes, oftentimes, sometimes I can't even remember or read what I've written and then I lose all that great material.
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And I know that the recording is catching everything and I can transcribe it and get it word for word, get it 100% accurate. So I tend to lean towards recording, it's just a great tool for me anyway. So how did you find your balance with it? Well, there were times when people were very uncomfortable with it, but there are other times too.
00:19:04
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sex money murder. And I did, you know, literally thousands and thousands of hours of interviews. And there was one time I think I was with Shug and he said, JJ, stop, stop. And I said, so what is it? He said, JJ, you haven't even turned the tape recorder on. I'm like, oh, thank you. So so, you know, he'd gotten so used to being recorded this lucky notice.
00:19:33
Speaker
like before me, that we didn't have the recorder in the middle of the table. So, you know, but obviously, like, you have to reach a point with people where they're sort of comfortable with that and stuff. And he loved it. I mean, he loved having a recorder there. Other people don't, you know. So I think a lot of it's just sort of reading your subjects and just making sure people are comfortable, you know, with however you choose to document them.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, kind of. I think John Krakauer in the new new journalism when he was interviewed in that in Boynton's book there, he kind of likens all these tools that a journalist can use as kind of like a photographer taking out different lenses.
00:20:16
Speaker
you know, they're, you know, maybe for, you know, for sugar for other people, they're totally comfortable with a recorder. So why not use it, but maybe there are other people who clam up. It's like, all right, well, now notebook scribble, do what you can with that, because that's going to be the tool to effectively have the best conversation with so and so because they'll clam up if they see the red light on the recorder. So yeah, it's just about being flexible. Yes, exactly. But I sort of find it's hard that once you have
00:20:46
Speaker
people on edge, it's very hard to sort of pull them back again. So I think those initial sort of meetings are really important. So I'll always ask, you know, are you sort of comfortable with a tape recorder? And if they say no, I say fine, I'll just, I'll write notes. But then, yes, I mean, you know, then it's, you know, hard to sort of capture everything they say, I mean, nuance and all the rest of it, it sort of,
00:21:11
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Makes your job a lot harder, but sometimes you have to work like that, you know, yeah Yeah, and then there's the beast of transcribing hours and hours of tape. So Yeah, which is a least favorite job I think I think all our sort of journalists are the same no one likes transcribing their interviews because you're always Horrified that why didn't I ask that they gave you a perfect opportunity and you missed the question, you know, I
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing too and I think that's why McPhee and Talise and all them, if you're scribbling constantly, it makes you feel a bit more engaged and you might have the right follow-up or you fall behind because you're like,
00:21:55
Speaker
three sentences behind what they're actually saying because you're scribbling down something they said 10 seconds ago as they keep going. So it's like you miss an opportunity to follow up sometimes. It's a weird thing and you've been doing this a while. I've been doing it not as long but a little while and it still kind of trips me up a bit. I wish there was just one way to do it and that's it. I know, like me too. But the other thing I find with notes and the sort of
00:22:22
Speaker
The barrier, I think, with scribbling notes is you have your head down and you're looking at your notepad. And I find, you know, if you really want to get the sort of trust of the people that you're interviewing, you really have to make eye contacts a lot, you know. And so I find that oftentimes, like, the notepad can be more of a sort of barrier to winning the trust than the tape recorder is. It all depends, you know.
00:22:48
Speaker
It really does. There's the other side of it too where if they see you scribbling, it kind of looks like you're working. And they're like, oh yeah, they're getting it all down, but it doesn't look as passive. They're like, oh yeah, there they are. They're scribbling like hell. They're really capturing what I'm saying.
00:23:03
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But then maybe with the recorder if you're just kind of sitting there holding that up near them and you're just kind of nodding, there could be a tendency to glaze over and not look like you're listening because you know the recorder is capturing everything. So it's definitely a weird dance you got to play. Absolutely, definitely.
00:23:25
Speaker
So what I found really poignant about what you said is coming out of a high school and you worked a lot of these very working class jobs and you always had your eye on being a writer and I wonder where did that seed of wanting to become a writer come in and how did you keep that as the light at the end of your tunnel while you were working on factory lines in garbage, in garbage trucks?
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, well, it was probably the only thing I could really do well at school was write. And I flunked almost everything. But in English, I always got A grades and things like that. I mean, I think from a very early age, my parents always encouraged reading. And we had a house full of books. So I was reading from an early age and just devoured books. I mean, just read and read and read.
00:24:23
Speaker
you know, loved the written word and stories and imagination. And, you know, just felt it was about the only thing I really had an interest in. So, you know, when I left school with nothing and all my sort of friends like were off at university and like having enormous fun, you know, just at these great passes and stuff. And I was working in a meat factory and an apple factory and, you know, really pretty sort of Dan in the dumps.
00:24:53
Speaker
Um, and I turn to books as I always did. So, you know, I used to read a lot of Dostoyevsky and, um, as a fantastic English writer, JG Ballard. And at that time in England, you know, there was a lot of exciting writing with music. I mean, and there were a lot of very cool magazines at the time. There was the Face, um,
00:25:18
Speaker
which, you know, really sort of captured sort of dance culture and warehouse parties and all that stuff. So, you know, I think books were always my salvation and my escape, you know, particularly from factory life. I mean, you know, like you're working these terrible jobs. And I remember standing next to one guy on a line. I mean, he was like 65 and I think he'd sort of served in the Navy and
00:25:48
Speaker
all of a sudden he started to tear up a little bit. And I said, so what's wrong? And he said, you know, standing here day after day after day, putting these things in a box, you know, I live on the memories of my life. I mean, that's how I managed to
00:26:06
Speaker
keep going and I just realized I've run out of memories. I have no more memories I can keep replaying to overcome the tedium of this job. It struck such a chord with me because if you're reasonably intelligent and bright, standing on a production line in a factory is like a slow death. It really is just like a jail sentence, but so many people have to work these jobs.
00:26:35
Speaker
I was just determined that I was going to break out of this mold and I'd read so much about foreign correspondence and so people roaming all over the world and finding out about what the world was really like. It just sort of lit a fire in me that either I was going to stay on the battery line or I was going to break out. So then I just started to write with sort of
00:27:05
Speaker
you know, I was more earnest, you know, and I was more impassioned about having my stuff published. And, and really, that was very, very pushy, but sort of not in a rude way, but just sort of, you know, kept sub missing pieces and just wouldn't take no for an answer. And, and it was sort of funny, really, because a lot of my friends who'd been to some, you know, very smart universes, and
00:27:33
Speaker
studied English literature and you know really had a great time studying all that stuff they sort of found it really hard to get jobs in journalism but by the time they came out of university I was sort of reasonably well established as a journalist you know so
Balancing Work and Writing
00:27:51
Speaker
That's amazing. Some people, when they have a day job of that nature, can use it as a way of hiding from wanting to do the work that they feel most passionate for. It can be a crutch, it can be a paycheck, and it's hard to sometimes leave that comfort.
00:28:12
Speaker
So how did you structure your days around that day job so that you didn't feel trapped and ultimately did get out and get off the line? Well, I got very used to using every negative experience in my life as something
00:28:29
Speaker
to write about. I remember I had a job working on a garbage truck. I actually liked that job because it was outdoors and you'd be in the countryside picking up garbage. I wrote a piece about it, just about what it was like to work as a garbage man.
00:28:55
Speaker
published in The Independent, which in England in the late 80s was the newspaper and it was very avant-garde. People loved The Independent. I mean, it was started to break the mold of sort of busty old sort of English national newspaper. So I published that and that sort of
00:29:16
Speaker
you know, then because that became a sort of calling card. So when you approached editors, you know, you could say, look, you know, here's a piece I wrote in The Independent. I mean, it wasn't a particularly ambitious sort of piece of journalism, but it was a nice tight sort of 800 words about the sort of humor of working on a garbage truck. So that helped. And then later on, when I was living in London, and there was one time I was
00:29:44
Speaker
beaten up really badly by some skinheads in a pub. And I was with a friend of mine. I mean, it was a, you know, hugely sort of traumatic experience. I mean, real, raw violence, you know. And I approached the Squire magazine and I said, hey, would you like a piece about what it's like to, you know, really get
00:30:07
Speaker
to be sent out by skinheads. And they said, yes, please. So I wrote a 2000 word piece and I, you know, put some statistics in there that, you know, like if you're a sort of male age between 18 and 24, then your sort of chances of being
00:30:25
Speaker
Beating up outside of public quite high and you know, it's quite sort of common but I noticed that a very graphic piece about that and You know that then sort of got got me going love of the squire in London and they thought well like this guy can With standard beating like that then he can do sort of lots of other challenging assignments. So that's when I you know started doing
00:30:55
Speaker
I took part in a very fast sort of car race and started doing crime stuff. I mean, anything that really had an edge and was a little raw, that's really sort of how I made my name in London at that time. But it always sort of started with some sort of negative experience that I would sort of put into words, you know.
00:31:18
Speaker
There's that line of, you know, life can't imitate art unless you, or art can't imitate life unless you have a life. And so it's like, by bypassing university, it was, you know, a way that put you in touch with real people and real experiences, real gritty stuff. And you had the writer sensibility. And so you had this weird access to the working class and what it's,
00:31:45
Speaker
that experience is like, and then you had the skill to be able to shape that into something that was evocative and moving. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't sort of always easy. I mean, to turn these sort of things into stuff that people actually want to read about. I mean, you know, like, you certainly have to sort of finesse the material, you know, to make it sort of compelling. But you know, but I love sort of rice is like,
00:32:12
Speaker
George Orwell, you know, was a huge inspiration in his book, Down and Out in Paris and London. I mean, it was all about street life and homelessness. And, you know, my first sort of big job on a magazine that was on a magazine in London called The Big Issue. And it was sold by homeless people. And it was a way for these sort of homeless people to make some money on their own and to
00:32:40
Speaker
gets a sort of leg up in life. So, you know, I was I was really drawn to that stuff, you know, you know, sort of giving voice to the working class or people who didn't really have a sort of, you know, had a very challenging circumstances. So I was felt quite sort of empathetic to people like that.
00:33:04
Speaker
Did a big chunk of your motivation and your writing and your journalism come from the fact that if it didn't work, you would be back on that line again? Yes. It was always a fear. Absolutely. It was my worst fear that if I didn't succeed at this, because I had no kind of
00:33:31
Speaker
safety net and I didn't have a degree. So I didn't have anything to like fall back on. So if it went wrong, there'd be nowhere else I could go but down, down, down. So I think that really sort of fired me up. I mean, a lot of people I knew tried sort of freelancing and just sort of found it really tough. And my answer always was, well, it's nowhere near as tough as having to turn up eight to five every day and stand on a production line in a
00:34:01
Speaker
battery. This is a far better life even if you have 10 rejections, but as long as you have enough money to pay your rent, then it's
00:34:14
Speaker
So yeah, I was always afraid that I'd have to go back there. Yeah. And in terms of the work and the writing and the research itself, I'm always interested to see how a particular artist defines rigor and tenacity. So I'd extend it to you. What did hard work look like with your journalism and your writing?
00:34:40
Speaker
Well, I think there's a list that's taught by these very old school reporters. I mean, another one of my first jobs was writing about the Magistrate's courts in London.
00:34:53
Speaker
and you know this was back in the day when like we used to smoke like when we wrote so you know i got used to using a manual typewriter and smoking and but there was always sort of wisdom around these you know smoky rooms uh in newspapers and you know people would always say you know just make one more court even if it's you know you think you have the story and and it's there just make one or two
00:35:23
Speaker
two more calls on it or if you think you're just about to like give up on a particular story just make that extra call so you know sort of like a marathon runner's always like okay you know I just have to get past this last you know few miles I always thought I just had to make those extra phone calls so I try to um apply that to sort of everything I
00:35:50
Speaker
did as a writer, but I'd always make that sort of extra call. I'd always try to meet people face to face, you know, not just like depend on the phone or email. So I just try to be more sort of rigorous in the way I was reaching out to people and, you know, getting people to talk, talk with you, you know.
00:36:13
Speaker
And making that extra cost, that's a skill into itself, learning to not be so trapped by your own introversion to go out and make that extra one because that could be a lead domino to a whole other subset of things worth doing or it might just circle you right back to everything you already knew and you know you're done.
00:36:37
Speaker
Also, once you get good at it, maybe the trap is I'm just going to keep making calls and then you never stop your research and then you never get to the writing. When do you know you're done? It's always really hard because I never feel I'm done. I always feel I need to add more, but I think
00:37:00
Speaker
you know, like with a magazine article, I'd always over research them. And I do with books too, I over research and then it's a case of, you know, sitting down with this mound of research and making kind of sense of it. And I think
00:37:17
Speaker
once you've exhausted every possibility and you're satisfied, like you've exhausted every possibility, I think is when you know, okay, now I can write, you know. That's tough, especially for the Titanic works of research and reporting, it's hard to keep things straight if you're not super organized by your very nature. So how do you keep things straight and organized so then eventually you can take
00:37:45
Speaker
The thousands of hours of tape that you had for a sex money murder and then start to make sense of it and tell a story. Well, I think, yeah, I mean, with that, it was it sort of using chronology to your advantage. So I knew once I'd worked out who the four main characters were.
00:38:04
Speaker
was getting into their life story right from the beginning all the way to where we are now. So a lot of that material didn't make it into the book, but it helped me understand the characters, you know, sort of really well. And I wanted to be able to tell a story that was, you know, entirely inside the point of view of the characters. That's how I wanted this book to really go.
00:38:34
Speaker
Um, so, you know, it, it was really just a case of starting to go right from, particularly with the guys in the gang, going right from, okay, so what are your earliest memories of sound view and what was it like as a kid and, you know, what interactions did you have with each other when you were really young and, and just sort of constantly building on that to build up a whole chronological time, time scale.
00:39:03
Speaker
And then in amongst that, you go back again when you know there's certain key parts of their story that are really useful to what you're trying to tell as a narrative. And then you explode those, let you go back and you say, okay, well,
00:39:19
Speaker
can you remember the sort of tone of voice that person used or their facial expression or like so what were they wearing and you know and you can't get in to those minutia questions until you have a rough idea of a narrative and how it's going to work in the actual book so you know it's quite painstaking and you know it really like depends on the sort of goodwill of the people you're interviewing and I make it clear
Writing 'Sex, Money, Murder'
00:39:49
Speaker
From the beginning, I say, look, I'm not really like a sort of normal journalist in that, you know, we're just going to have one or two conversations and that's it. You know, you have to get used to speaking with me a lot and all the time. So eventually what happened was is these guys, you know, these guys sort of loved it so much. I mean, it was hard in the beginning and no one had ever asked them about their families or growing up. But then they started to call me and they said, yeah, I'll
00:40:18
Speaker
JJ, you were talking about the other day and, you know, I just, you know, that time when I was eight and we stole the bicycles in San Diego, I just wanted to like tell you about that. So I got very used to just having the phone on all the time and.
00:40:34
Speaker
always having a notepad or always having the ability to record the call and just having these snippets of stuff that became fantastic in the book in the end because they were off the cuff and it wasn't me pulling it out, it was somebody saying, look, this was a really important part of my life and I want to make sure that you understand it.
00:40:58
Speaker
And how do you get comfortable asking even the most mundane of questions, like, for instance, what was the tone of voice or the facial expressions? Those are things that if you're witness to it, you don't have to ask. But if you're not witness, as you were for all the events of this book, you basically recreated the entire thing. You do have to make it read like fiction.
00:41:25
Speaker
You do have to get those little details so i suspect that my experience has been like some people roll their eyes like why the why the hell do you want to know that. But it's like yeah what were they wearing doing it did they push their glasses up the bridge of their nose like what you know those little things like so how did you get comfortable with asking those little mundane questions.
00:41:46
Speaker
always apologize first. And they said, like, you have to stop apologizing. It's because you're English. Is it? I said, yeah, I guess. And they'd laugh and I'd say, no, no, it's fine. You know, you know, like you've already explained that we're going to sort of work on these scenes and we understand. So, you know, Pike was amazing. I mean, he would he would remember things. I'd say, well, what about this? And he'd think and so he'd say it and then he'd
00:42:13
Speaker
circle back and say, No, no, no, hold on. I mean, that's not right. And sometimes I'm like, they'd go and check. So they'd call other gang members or someone else in the family and say, Hey, like, you remember that time when? Is this what happened? And, you know, and so we sort of corroborate it that way too. So, you know, just became part of the process, really.
00:42:39
Speaker
Right, right. And when starting any book with heroes or anti-heroes and villains or whatever, however you or whatever character you start a book or a TV show with, I think naturally the reader or the viewer is going to kind of hook into that person. And even if they're unsavory and bad, they end up becoming sort of
00:43:06
Speaker
Likeable despite their villainy if you will like I'm thinking of Breaking Bad and everything and and And you you know you start this book like shoes the main the main character to start the book So like how did you decide to start with? Say like the gang members versus maybe law enforcement like what was that the decision-making like I
00:43:28
Speaker
Well you know there was a very key turning point in the book for all the main characters in the book and that was the shooting on Thanksgiving and you know the person at the heart of that was sure because he's the one who carried out the murder so it was easy then to
00:43:46
Speaker
say, okay, so this is the guy whose head we have to be in when the book starts and what does his world look like? You know, where was he standing? Okay, so he's standing on the roof, you know, so would you tee off the roof? And then what was going on through his head? I mean, I think most people have a sort of basic
00:44:08
Speaker
question of, you know, if you're about to commit a murder, you know, what's so going on in your mind? Like, why are you doing it? So, you know, I think these are, you know, sort of natural curiosity helps you kind of set up the book in a way, because I think that, you know, the material presents itself to you. And, you know, I think it's, you know, it was easy to make, to make a decision then. And of course,
00:44:37
Speaker
Um, it's, you know, it's all about stakes. Like who, who, who has the most at stake in this scene? And she'll get that point in the book, had the most at stake, you know, if he failed in what he was doing, then he might be killed himself. So, so it's really life or death stuff. I mean, literally. So I think that, that was an obvious sort of place to sort of start.
00:45:03
Speaker
the narrative
Approaching Crime Stories
00:45:04
Speaker
and it was also a key turning point because after that murder was when the feds became involved and you know like my other sort of characters started moving and revolving around those scenes so I thought that was an obvious way to sort of start the book.
00:45:24
Speaker
How did you get to a point where you saw them as maybe humans and not monsters, if that makes any sense? Like you kind of maybe divorced their crimes from the people that they are? Well, I mean, I always give people the benefits of the doubt. So even before we met, I tried to sort of purge myself of any preconceptions, which is not always
00:45:48
Speaker
easy. But that's what I try and do with every interview I do as a sort of journalist, you know, don't have any preconceived notions. And, you know, that's surprisingly hard to sort of get, get rid of in yourself. But certainly, when I first met Sugar and Pipe, I wanted to know them, not to sort of
00:46:10
Speaker
criminals or gang members or what they've done, but as human beings, you know, you know, people who'd been very, you know, raised in a very tough environment, lots of poverty, crime, and, you know, everything in our lives that we experience molds who we are. I mean, certainly my experience is working in a factory sort of molded me and I tried to use that sort of negative experience as a way to
00:46:37
Speaker
better myself, but that's not always easy. I mean, I think for sugar and pipe, we're raised in a very tough environment. And I think I could understand why people would get involved in a gang and, you know, the fast money of drugs when the only other opportunity is so dead end jobs, which pay, you know, small amounts of money, which I'd done myself. So, you know, I wanted to
00:47:06
Speaker
wanted to just sort of understand them as sort of people and I felt by doing that I think that's what my readers would be most interested in. I mean I think it's always personalities and strong characters really make great books and and you know that was how I wanted to approach it all.
00:47:30
Speaker
Was there ever a challenge in tone that you didn't want to glorify things that were unsavory in the book based on the charisma of your main characters? Yes, I mean, you know, I was, you know, I never ever wanted to sort of glorify like what they'd done. I mean, you know,
00:47:54
Speaker
um like you love the man and not the sins you know and and and because a lot of the stuff when we started to get really into it was so violent and and and so uh you know so against sort of like many of the things i sort of stand for i mean i've spent years
00:48:13
Speaker
you know, doing human rights sort of journalism and, you know, writing about victims of sort of murderous regimes, you know, like my first book, Murder in the High Himalaya. So, you know, I certainly wasn't about to, you know, say it was called or anything like that. And I think in the end,
00:48:38
Speaker
You know, they started with some bravado, but then when we spoke about this stuff, it was very matter of fact. And, you know, Pike would say, well, I had to carry out this act because being in a gang and a hierarchy, if I hadn't, then my own life would be at risk. So then you start to sort of understand it and, you know, like you understand
00:49:03
Speaker
why the violence occurs. And I think a big part was trying to get past these sort of taboos about violence and understanding it. And so how did you arrive at this story? And then as we were talking about access earlier, get such incredible access to these main players in your book. Well, I mean, I think that you can't sort of force anyone
00:49:32
Speaker
as a journalist, you can't force people to talk with you because you have no leverage in that sense. You have to have people who want to talk with you, who want to tell you these things, and Sugar and Pipe had approached
00:49:51
Speaker
John O'Malley, you know, to one of the main characters on the law enforcement side. And they said, look, you know, we'd really like to sort of tell our story, you know, like we're tired of being called snitches. And, you know, we want people to really understand why we did what we did. And I think as soon as you have people who are ready to talk with you, you know, like you don't have to sort of tease this out of people, you know, people want to talk.
00:50:19
Speaker
And these are the people that you want to be writing about. And at what point did you get turned on to this story and realize what potential was there? Well, the potential was hard to see. I mean, it's like I think any of these books, it's like you have a massive sort of
00:50:43
Speaker
ball of twine. And, you know, there's like multiple strings. And, you know, you have to sort of tease each of these kinds of strings out to see where it's going to lead. And I think, you know, tipping down with Chug and Pipe and understanding their lives and the violence and then how these crucial acts in their lives like murders or the formation of the gang, how that works against the backdrop of what was happening in
00:51:12
Speaker
society on a wider level. So, you know, the late 1980s, early 1990s was the crack epidemic, and that led to a homicide epidemic. And New York was really sort of struggling with these murders. But then, you know, the FBI and these other organizations were really focused on the mafia. And, you know, there was a sort of underlying racist
00:51:41
Speaker
theme where people weren't sort of investigating, well, I mean, they were sort of in
00:51:50
Speaker
investigating murders in the housing projects, but they weren't making any headway. But those were the things that were driving the sort of sky high homicide rate in the city. So then I had sort of context, you know, like you, you know, then you had a reason to understand law enforcement and what they were doing and what their
00:52:11
Speaker
So I think when you start out, you know, you're looking for the imperative that all your main characters have, and you know that they have a sort of problem, basically, that they want to solve. So Sug and Pie, you know, didn't have money, so they wanted money. So that was their problem. How did they solve it? You know, O'Malley and Porcelli saw all these homicides in the Bronx.
Creating Suspense in Nonfiction
00:52:39
Speaker
at the time you know how do we stop the killing so like that was their problem to solve and then these four characters all converge and you know that's obviously like the basis of really good non-fiction when everyone sort of meets so I think that's when I started to get okay so this could be a book you know
00:53:03
Speaker
Jill Liovi, I think I'm pronouncing your name right, she wrote the review in the New York Times about your book and she wrote at one point that, one senses at points that Green wants to reach for novelistic flourishes, but he's restrained by better impulses. The book reconstructs events long past and Green is bound by the available sources, mainly investigative records and interviews with members of the gang.
00:53:27
Speaker
Rather than try to compensate for the material he's missing, he bets on plain language and diligent documentation and allows his sources unfiltered remembrances to take center stage. So when you read that, what did you think when you read that and how did you arrive at the approach to the actual structuring of the narrative and the writing of the book?
00:53:51
Speaker
Well, you know, I mean, I read that someone's like, God, you know, she really understands my work, you know, and how challenging it was because, you know, there's so many times in real life when, you know, like you have this scene and, you know, it's about, you know, it's about to get really good, but then real life happens and everything turns down and it becomes monotonous again. And, you know, really with
00:54:21
Speaker
writing about gangs. I mean, so much of it is sort of tedious and kind of boring. I mean, standing on the block and, you know, various sort of feuds start with other people and then they don't lead anywhere. You know, so there's lots of that stuff that you have to listen to and understand it. And if it
00:54:44
Speaker
you know, if it's important to something that happens later on, then you have to include it to show, you know, how your sort of character is evolving and coming to different realizations. So in the end, you know, I just found that the material was so strong and compelling, but I didn't need to sort of finesse it much because just the stark reality of it was enough.
00:55:11
Speaker
So I think to sort of state it in very sort of bleak terms, a lot of the time as a writer, you know, is more powerful than sort of overwriting and, you know, trying to pull out a greater sort of meaning of things as they happen than they really are. I mean, you know, we all want to write scenes and say, well, you know, this happened and then this sort of made him the sort of person he is and all the rest of it.
00:55:38
Speaker
so much of our lives is just you know small things happen and you know we don't know really how they affect us but maybe sort of later on they do so it you know when you're because I'd sort of charted pretty much these guys sort of whole lives you know from so when they were kids that I you know I felt I just had to be really sort of faithful to what happened and just sort of let let the story unfold and I think
00:56:08
Speaker
chronology really like is your sort of greatest friend when you're sort of telling stories like this that, you know, I think a lot of writers try to struggle against chronology and do flashbacks and cut ins and all that stuff. And really, I think, you know, over time, I think you learn to understand that it actually works in your favor that all stories on spool that crilly. And sometimes I think you just have to let the story
00:56:38
Speaker
have its own league. It's a bit like riding a horse and you give a horse free rein and you let it run and it goes where it wants. To a certain point, not to bore the reader with lots of stuff, but I think everything has an actual ebb and flow and it's trying to capture that without losing the reader. That was the challenge.
00:57:07
Speaker
When I was talking with David Grant about Killers of the Flower Moon and how he was constantly able in his long magazine pieces and books to create suspense and drama in what's already ossified as a non-fiction true account, he echoed exactly what you just said that chronology is your friend and let the story
00:57:31
Speaker
play out through their eyes in that chronology like they don't know certain things you know at point A they don't know point C yet even though you as the author know it so you let them let the story just play out in that sense and then they're discovering things as you go and it creates this natural progression of suspense and tension and that's kind of exactly what you're alluding to.
00:57:55
Speaker
One of the things when you try to write through the sort of point of view of your characters, I think there's a natural suspense in particularly in sort of gang life and that type of thing. I mean, there's, you know, moments like when you're related, there's moments like when you're scared. So I think it's sort of finding those key points in like people's stories and then sort of
00:58:23
Speaker
Um, using that to, you know, stop the action or start the action at those points. I mean, I think particularly was sure, for example, on the Thanksgiving giving day shooting, I mean, he had no idea what was going to happen when he went sort of down on the field and sort of opened fire. Um, so he was starting to run things through, through his mind at that point. So I think that's a, you know, a natural time when
00:58:54
Speaker
there's elements of suspense there which you don't have to manufacture. And I think, you know, there's times as a writer when you really want to sort of, you know, manufacture some big sort of cliffhanger or suspense and you might sort of take a scene, you know, which doesn't have the power
Green's Writing Routine and Challenges
00:59:16
Speaker
to do that and sort of overwrite it. And I had to learn that sort of early on, like with magazine work, that, you know, don't try test falsely sort of manufacturer suspense, because it never works, you know, it has to have a natural point to where it evolves. So I think it's just sort of finding those points in the story.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah, and the other thing too, if things are naturally suspenseful and fraught with their own kind of drama to just kind of let that take its course and let that generate its own momentum too.
01:00:01
Speaker
research. It's very often that you might read other people's work because they haven't researched it thoroughly. They're trying to build stuff out of material which is simply not there. That's why I go very heavy on the research.
01:00:24
Speaker
portion because if that's down well then you know you're going to have enough material where you don't have to sort of manipulate it too much in order to get the effect that you want you know but you but you have to you know work really well with your subjects in order to sort of find that you know.
01:00:45
Speaker
Were there any particular influential books that you had read or reread that helped inform the work you did with Sex, Money, Murder? Let me think. Gosh, I mean, I read all the time. I mean, and I found actually recently, I can't read much.
01:01:10
Speaker
fiction anymore. I always used to read like loads and loads of it. I used to love stories telling in that way because you're not bound by any rules when you're making things up and the writing can be very lavish and extravagant because you're not bound by facts. But working on this,
01:01:37
Speaker
you know, you want to, you know, I mean, the facts were sort of strong enough, you know, they didn't need much of embellishment. So, you know, I mean, I, you know, I love sort of, Rice's like, like, David Gran, crack hour, I think is amazing. And just, you know, he researches, um,
01:01:56
Speaker
you know, very, very well. So that what's on the page is a strong Tracy Kidder. I read a lot of and I, you know, I tried to sort of stay away from like, true crime stuff as much as I could, because, you know, I, you know, it is like a book about crime, but it's much more sort of,
01:02:22
Speaker
social history. It's much more about these guys' lives and they were involved in crime. So I avoided watching things like The Wire or Immersive Myself and a lot of sort of crime stuff, really.
01:02:39
Speaker
And when you were writing the book and you had your research and you're getting down to the writing, what was your daily routine as you were looking to get into that flow, that generative flow through the first few drafts?
01:02:53
Speaker
Oh, God, I hate the first draft. So it's so painful. My God, I'd rather rub like glass in my eyes. It never comes out right. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I've got like two young kids. So I've had to, you know, before I had kids, I would not speak to anyone in the morning and just have coffee and sit down right. But
01:03:22
Speaker
these days, I can't really do that. So, you know, I sort of drive the kids into school and, and then I'd sort of come back and I'd have to have a sort of half an hour or an hour or so where I'm just sort of, you know, clearing out of everything. So I'd, you know, that's so when I structure chapters, roughly where that chapter was going to
01:03:48
Speaker
to go and Bernard starts writing at around 10 or 11. I really only have a few hours in me on the writing side, so I do like three, four, maybe five hours at most. I'd stop at like two o'clock or so, something like that.
01:04:17
Speaker
and then I'd read back to what I wrote in the evening and then start again in the morning. I mean, I think there's only a certain sort of period of time when you can sort of concentrate, because it requires so much concentration to put this down on the page accurately. Like I can't sort of write at night, and I know sort of other people who do,
01:04:44
Speaker
It always has to be early in the morning if I can. I mean, earlier the better, you know. Right, right. So is there any other sort of tactics you use in terms of how you're setting up your desk so you can like access things, you know, apps or do you turn off the internet? Like how do you – what does that look like so you do have that very sort of arrowhead focus?
01:05:12
Speaker
Well, I had a big sort of pinboard with cards on it. Oh, I love it. Yeah, you know, with lines and color sort of coded cards. And then that was sort of split up into sort of three acts, which is a sort of three acts of the book. So any time I was writing, I could turn and sort of look back at her
01:05:37
Speaker
particular date or or a time and you know so you have it on your card when this sort of key moment happens in this character's life and so that then informs how you write a particular scene you know because you're referring back to something that may have happened so that sort of board was incredibly sort of useful I mean yes I tried to
01:06:06
Speaker
keep my desk clear and all that stuff but actually like there was one time and I had this you know this giant board with cards on it and my daughter had come in my office in the evening and she pulled out all the pins holding in all the cards literally like you know probably a hundred cards and all this stuff and it had been so
01:06:29
Speaker
beautifully laid out and meticulous, and they were all in a pile on the floor with a nice neat pile of drawing pins next to them. And she said, Daddy, look, I've sort of tied it all up for you. And you're like, you ruined my book. Yes, I think. That's lovely. I just put my head in my hands. It took like a week to get it back to how it was.
01:06:56
Speaker
And before I let you get out of here, Jonathan, I wanted to maybe ask you about maybe some advice you might give.
Advice for Aspiring Writers
01:07:07
Speaker
It's funny. Some people ask, what would you give advice to a younger person? And the fact is, a younger person probably won't listen to it anyway.
01:07:16
Speaker
Maybe the people who most listen to it are perhaps people who are maybe mid-career, maybe low to mid-30s, mid to late 30s, who might be a bit stuck, who have some talent, but things aren't just hitting a certain level of visibility and so forth. I wonder maybe through your experience and anything, what might you tell someone like that who's a bit stuck with ability and is just having a hard time getting that breakthrough?
01:07:44
Speaker
Well, I think often, you know, you don't have any control over what happens externally. Like, you know, like you have no control over, you know, if your book's going to be a sort of breakout for the particular time or whether a particular editor working on a particular magazine is going to be sympathetic to your story ideas. But what you do have control control over is the quality of your work. And I think just sort of focusing on that
01:08:14
Speaker
you know, as much as you can and just sort of taking like enormous pride in like what you do, because you know, not just one book is going to define you, not just one like magazine piece will. But I think over time, you start to sort of build up a body of work. And, you know, oftentimes, some of the pieces I've done, which weren't, you know, published in the most prestigious
01:08:42
Speaker
places are the ones I love the most, you know, and the stuff that is published in magazines where you have a high audience and they're meant to be, you know, high visibility and stuff, but not the pieces I'm the most kind of proud of. So, um, you know, I just don't think that you should sort of set the bar at what other people think of your work. I know that's really difficult. Um, you know, uh, I think all your work has to,
01:09:12
Speaker
Appeal commercially in some sense, but I think you know just to take pride in what you're doing because it's anyone who knows this world knows it's really really difficult and You know, you have to put your hand on your heart and say I I did my best, you know, yeah Glenn style uh says like really the only thing you can control is your effort and then yes, that's it and
01:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's all you can do and how people receive it or what they think of it. And, you know, there's a very sort of fine line between a book, you know, sort of being a breakout or a book, you know, being really, really good. That's probably better than what sort of commercially successful. So, you know, just just
01:10:02
Speaker
Don't be too hard on yourself because I think we as writers tend to be really hard on ourselves and have a bit of doubt and try not to have that. Just like to let the work have a natural flow and enjoy it. Fantastic.
01:10:20
Speaker
Well, Jonathan, to be respectful of your time, I'll let you get out of here. This was a ton of fun. Where can people find you online and more about your latest book and your work in general? Yes, of course. So I have a website, JonathanGreenOnline.com. Sex, Money, Murder is out. It's been out about a month. It's available on Amazon.
01:10:49
Speaker
Barnes & Noble and Independence Doors and my first book Murder in the High Himalaya is also available everywhere and send me an email I mean if anyone has any questions or they'd like to know more I'm at mail at JonathanGreenOnline.com which is a bit of a mouthful but that's where I am
01:11:13
Speaker
Fantastic. I'll link all that stuff up in the show notes, Jonathan. Thanks again for your time. Best of luck with the book, and we'll be in touch. Maybe get you on for a round two sometime down the road. Thanks, Brendan. I really enjoyed it, actually. Fantastic. Fantastic stuff. Yeah, very cool. Awesome. Thanks so much, Jonathan. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.
01:11:38
Speaker
Well, at long last we've come to the end. Thank you for listening and thank you for Jonathan for thank you to Jonathan. Sorry for his time. Before you go on about your day, would you be so kind as to consider leaving a review of the podcast on Apple Podcasts?
01:11:56
Speaker
I love to see us get 200 ratings or views
01:12:13
Speaker
Also, if you head over to BrendanOmera.com, not only will you find show notes for the episodes, but you'll also be able to sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. In it, I share my reading recommendations for the month and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Once a month, no spam can beat it.
01:12:33
Speaker
go ahead and follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Brendan O'Mara and follow the podcast at cnfpod on Twitter and at cnfpodcast on Facebook. You can also email me if you have any questions or concerns. If you're struggling with your work, I'd love to help you out. So, you know, it's been a while since I tried to get my wife to subscribe to the podcast. And you know what she said?
01:13:03
Speaker
We'll see you right back here next Friday. Have a CNF and great week, friends.
01:13:50
Speaker
you