Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 337: Ander Monson
291 Plays2 years ago
Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) is the author of Predator: A Memoir, A Movie, An Obsession.
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @CNFPod
Beer Discount: athleticbrewing.com, promo code BRENDANO20
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Athletic Brewing Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey CNEvers, many of you know I love to crack open a beer on this podcast. Sometimes it contains booze, other times it doesn't. I've been selected as a brand ambassador for athletic brewing, a brewery that makes my favorite non-alcoholic beer. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get 20% off your first order. Head to athleticbrewing.com and order yourself, in my opinion, the best non-alcoholic beer you'll ever drink. I mean it. Also, I don't get any money.
00:00:30
Speaker
Full transparency. I get these points towards, like, merch and beer if I'd like, but no money. Go check
Movie Reflections and Book Project on 'Predator'
00:00:38
Speaker
it out. Everything about it, everything about the movie that I love is about our inability to see ourselves and our ways in which we interact with the world that we're in. And that's the gift that I think the movie gives. And that's, you know, what I'm at least trying to enact a little bit by spending a whole book writing about a fucking predator.
Introduction to CNF Pod and Guest Ander Monson
00:01:04
Speaker
Oh, and wouldn't you know, it's CNF Pod, the creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I am Brendan O'Mara. How's it going? Oh, man, today's guest. Would you believe it? He's back. Ander Monson. Ah, it's the author of Predator, a memoir, a movie, an obsession. It is published by Grey Wolf.
00:01:32
Speaker
This book is up for a CNF-y, a totally and utterly meaningless literary award brought to you by this little podcast that could. Brad Listies, be brief and tell them everything is also going to be a finalist. And there also is the author of Vanishing Point, Gnome Stories, and the founder, I think he's a founder, of the famous March Exness Essay Tournament that you see on Twitter where they're dueling essays.
Newsletter Promotion and Podcasting Techniques
00:02:00
Speaker
Because
00:02:02
Speaker
That's a thing. Show notes to this episode and a billion others, or at brendanomero.com. Hey, there you can shine up to my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. This is where it's at, CNFers. I hope it entertains, give you value, shows you some things that I've stumbled across on the internet that I think you'll entertain you. And you know what it really does? It sticks it to the algorithm, right up the algorithm's keister. If that's your thing, go ahead and sign up.
00:02:30
Speaker
Been doing it for a lot of years. First of the month. No spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. Oh, Anders' book. Oh, it's so good. Oh, we get right into it.
Importance of Good Audio Quality
00:02:42
Speaker
But I will add one more item. At times, guests offer to tape sync their side of the conversation, meaning they only record their side. They have headphones on, a good mic, and they're recording either on a recorder or through a digital audio workstation on their computer, be it Hindenburg, which is what I use, or Audacity, or GarageBand, or maybe something else.
00:03:06
Speaker
And this interview or Anders audio is a masterclass in the power of tape syncing I try to I try like hell to get people to record with good microphones and non echoey rooms and they largely ignore me and Are stepped up his game and you will enjoy the final product?
00:03:26
Speaker
it is so good it's so nice on the ear and it's gonna as Brad Listy says that audio is gonna age really well on the internet it's so worth the effort if you can do it so listen to Anders audio here and you'll be like man I'm gonna I'm gonna step up my audio game so let's get after it see it efforts riff
Ander Monson on 'Predator' and Publication Challenges
00:03:56
Speaker
Good. Pretty hype. Pretty hype about Predator. So there's that. Oh, that's great. This bug was a trap. I had such a good time reading it. It was awesome.
00:04:06
Speaker
Thanks. I'm glad to hear it. It's been nice to, you know, it's been bubbling a lot like inside me for a really long time. And I've been talking about Predator and like this project for a really long time. So it's been a relief to kind of both get it out in the world and then also to start hearing back from people about their experiences with it, which has been cool.
00:04:28
Speaker
I have a, oh it was a gift, I have a t-shirt that is Dylan in Dutch with their handshake and he just says, Dylan you son of a bitch.
00:04:40
Speaker
You son of a bitch. Oh yeah. Yeah, I have a, I mean, I should have worn, not that we can see each other, but I should have worn it as a uniform for this conversation. I just have a Metallica shirt on, staying on brand. Nice. But yeah, it's one of my favorite shirts and it's certainly, let me go, one of my, one of those all-time classic movies too. It's just, I remember one of the first times I saw it, like,
00:05:09
Speaker
I like it kind of freaked me out. It's like the with the skull and the spine coming out like it grossed me out. I was like this movie freaking me out. Yeah, I mean it's got a lot like I've been debating recently because my daughter who's eight she came to one of my events.
00:05:27
Speaker
And she's like, okay, when can I watch Predator? And I'm like, well, you're eight. So I've been debating, but I told her she could watch it, but she's got to watch it with me. Yeah. And I think she'll be into it, but there's certainly some aspects of it that I think maybe a little bit of a tough sell, but she doesn't get scared. And what better person to watch it with than to watch it with your dad?
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, like I said, I had such a good time reading it and I got it published by Grey Wolf. I feel like Grey Wolf is, it's like the publisher for, it's kind of like, not a hipster press, but it's one of those presses where it's like, I think every writer secretly wants to be published by them. It's just, they seem to have that kind of cachet among writers.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, they've got such a great range of books that they publish. And so, you know, I mean, this book could have belonged somewhere else, but I worked pretty hard to make it in a way that Grey Wolf would say yes to it. And there's a little bit of a story behind that that we can get into because they said no to it a couple of times before they finally said yes.
00:06:38
Speaker
But I think something you said a moment ago that kind of stuck out was that you talked about the project a lot with people and spouting it out, probably bouncing ideas off people, and now you're starting to get the feedback back.
Writing Collaboration and Masculinity Themes
00:06:53
Speaker
Does it help you to metabolize what you're working on by talking it out with some people, given that some people like to just kind of keep that close to the vest? Like Hemingway never shared his shit.
00:07:03
Speaker
with anyone like do you find that it's like you you you definitely like to kind of a share what you're working on
00:07:11
Speaker
You know, I do sometimes and sometimes I don't. I mean, I've regretted talking about, you know, novels that have been working on, which, you know, are still not out in the world in the past. Because, you know, you lose steam on things and then it's like, oh, what's up with that labyrinth novel you're working on? Like, oh, yeah, you know, still kind of working on it, but like in a in a slow way. But with Predator, I mean, for me, this book is like
00:07:35
Speaker
it really is a communal book. It's about like, it is about watching it kind of myself, but it is about watching it with other people and talking about it with other people. So that feeling of, of like, you know, talking about the book
00:07:52
Speaker
with other people who I mean, who haven't often seen it, or especially if you have, has really been generative for me, because it helped me understand that the way that I see predator when I watch predator is not necessarily the way that other people see or watch predator.
00:08:09
Speaker
which was a decision that I kind of had to lean into pretty early on. Well, not pretty early on. I mean, maybe about two-thirds of the way through this process of kind of editing and rewriting the book was kind of deciding that I was going to call it a memoir.
00:08:25
Speaker
I was trying to talk about masculinity and gun violence and American imperialism and these big ideas that I have some way of attacking, but I don't know really how to write about those. And then when I realized, but I could write about Predator, which has those things in it and use that to open things up.
00:08:49
Speaker
And then when I realized that, I'm like, but you know, I mean, the way that I'm doing it, I kind of have to offer myself as the medium on on which this, you know, the movie is being shown. And that helped like that talking about it that way and like talking about what I see in the movie with people helped
00:09:06
Speaker
me discover that aspect of it, but also helped me discover kind of new things about the way that other people see and watch the movie too. I just had a Twitter conversation with somebody, this guy who wrote actually a really nice review for the LA Review of Books.
00:09:23
Speaker
of Predator today and I was kind of like reading it and he kind of made the point in on in like a kind of subsequent tweet that there is I mean really at the point that he's trying to make which I think is also embedded in what I'm trying to get at in the book is like if you want to like have I'm arguing for a bigger masculinity that can encompass more than I sort of understood
00:09:48
Speaker
that it could when I was 13, which is, you know, a pretty small masculinity, obviously, that I kind of believed in then.
Cultural Resonance of 'Predator'
00:09:55
Speaker
And it's like there is a moment in the movie, like, you know,
00:09:59
Speaker
Dutch Schwarzenegger's character is a final girl in this movie. Like he is hunted. Everyone else is killed. And like that affect of it is like to be able to admit the sort of femininity, kind of like a received male gazers femininity, but like a femininity like into this like super butch hardcore macho masculinity that otherwise the movie thinks it wants to be and like inhabit and to kind of model
00:10:29
Speaker
is a pretty cool idea, but like an idea that, you know, I only came to on my 153rd viewing, which was a couple weeks ago the night before the movie came out. And I was like, oh shit, he's the final girl. I wish I kind of knew, but I'm like, I didn't really know until that point. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. Like sometimes, like, you know, it's a good work of art when you can discover something new about it with your 153rd time through it.
00:10:53
Speaker
What struck me too about reading it was I wanted to get a sense of whether it was you wanted to write about Predator and the other themes emerged or you wanted to talk about certain themes and then Predator became the vehicle through which you could structure the things that you were thinking about, if that makes any sense.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean both. It 100% did both because I was trying to metabolize my response to the Gifford shooting. I mean, that was one of the real early moments, which I talk about in I'll Take the Answer. Like there's an essay in there that's, I mean, that book's kind of about that too. And it's starting to kind of spiral out into the stuff I was getting into with Predator.
00:11:38
Speaker
But like that moment where, you know, she gets shot and I'm kind of in shock and I'm playing Fallout 3. I don't know if it was Fallout 3. I think it was Fallout 3, not Fallout 3 New Vegas. And I'm like just headshotting people with my sniper rifle as a kind of self-care.
00:11:55
Speaker
And I'm like, whoa. And I had to kind of step back for a second. Like, what the fuck is that? It was like a really disturbing moment for me that I'm like, where did that come from? I mean, and it is like, I mean, it is self care. Like I actually find like that game in particular, but all the Fallout series to be a kind of home and a homecoming when I play them, I feel very comfortable.
00:12:19
Speaker
in that kind, sort of enacting that particular kind of violence that I'm playing on screen. And I'm like, okay, well, what's up with that? And then I was like thinking more about like, well, I mean, where do I get that from? And then, you know, I mean, of course I was thinking about that for a long time and things like January 6th happened. I'm like, oh shit. And all these like mass shootings keep happened. And I'm like, oh shit, like this is awful. But it's always these dudes. And like these dudes that are like, you know, what makes them different than me?
00:12:48
Speaker
But also, what did we all consume that makes us this way? And one of the things that we consumed, and the thing that is maybe the most resonant cultural artifact, at least in my life, and the thing that I notice hearing from the most people that I run into, especially dudes within 10 years or so of me, is predator.
00:13:13
Speaker
And I'm like, whoa, what is it about that? Why is that in the movie that keeps getting quoted, that keeps coming back? And that's when I really started to rewatch it. I mean, I'd seen it probably 30 times up to that point.
00:13:26
Speaker
But then I started to rewatch Predator when I was like, you know, disc golfing and this guy's like, you know, get to the choppa. And someone else is like screaming like another quote. And I'm like, whoa, like this has become a kind of like a lingua franca of like guys on and like why that movie versus like any one of the other hundred of those movies that I saw.
00:13:49
Speaker
And you start watching it, you're like, oh, because this is legitimately a great movie and is trying to satirize these movies and is trying to take the piss out of gun violence and all this other stuff. And I'm like, OK, so now Predator is the vehicle that I'm going to ride going deep into this thing. And it allows me access to talk about some of that other stuff that I would have had a hard time coming at directly.
00:14:15
Speaker
Did it help you to structure the book almost as if we're watching it with you and then you're able to go on these exploratory tangents while you have the linear spine of the movie going throughout the whole book?
Structuring the Book Around 'Predator'
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah. And that was a late decision. So I'd sent this book to Grey Wolf. I'd originally started writing it as poems. Poems usually in the voice of Predator, but not always. There's a couple poems in the voice of other characters like this stuntman in the movie that get blown up and you see him flying into a pool. And I like writing those, but I really liked writing as the Predator.
00:14:54
Speaker
on, which is the thing that most people like about the Predator. When people cosplay this stuff, they cosplay Predator. They don't cosplay Dutch or any of the other guys. They want to be the Predator, which is the movie. The movie offers us that when we see through its POV. I think it's inviting that. I was writing these poems. I'm like, these are the best poems I've ever written. I love these poems.
00:15:19
Speaker
No one else really seems to like these poems. But I'm like, this is obviously a book, so I wrote this book, sent it to Gray Wolf. Gray Wolf's like, yeah, that's a no. Really a hard no, I think. I took it as a hard no. And I'm like, okay. And I tried to stop it around elsewhere. They're like, yeah, that's a no from a number of other places. So I'm like, okay. Going back to the drawing board, what if there are essays? What if I take the line breaks out?
00:15:46
Speaker
which is what I started to do. And then I published several of them as essays. And my gatly these work pretty well as essays, like, I mean, which maybe says something about the quality of them as poems, if they kind of work as well or better as essays, maybe they weren't really that good poems. And the people that were telling me that I should listen to on maybe, but like, I'm not good at listening to people sometimes. So like, okay, so I like I rewrote it as these kind of lyric essays that were pretty intense. And they were usually
00:16:14
Speaker
essays that were responding to a shot in the movie. I would have like a screenshot of the frame from the movie because I watched it frame by frame at one point. And I would be like kind of writing out of and into these moments. And so I did a whole version of this. I'm like, all right, this rules. I love this. Send it back to Grey Wolf to my editor. And she's like, yeah, that's a no. But it was kind of a qualified no. And it's like, she's like, I think you've kind of followed yourself down a rabbit hole.
00:16:42
Speaker
and don't know how to get out. And one of the pieces of feedback I heard from Fiona McCray, who was then the publisher of Grey Wolf and who's, you know, I mean, maybe she's, I think she's a good reader in the sense that she's a little skeptical of some of like what I'm interested in doing. So I'm always trying to kind of convince her in my mind anyway. And her feedback was like, I don't know if you love this movie or hate it.
00:17:08
Speaker
And I'm like, ah, shit. Like, I mean, I've really failed if it's not obvious, like both. Like, I love the movie, but I'm hurt by it. And like, you know, you can only engage with something this intensely if you love it, but I've failed if that's not clear. So I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna take this whole thing back and I'm gonna rewrite it from scratch, like not using a sentence from the original.
00:17:29
Speaker
And what I realized at that point was that maybe what I do need is like a really simple narrative framework, and which is now like, let's just watch the movie together. And when I figured that out, I'm like, okay, this is much easier, because then we can also watch it together. There is like a little more of like, I'm your tour guide to the movie.
00:17:51
Speaker
And if you haven't seen the movie, then maybe then it's an easier access for you to kind of get into the book. And if you have seen the movie, then, you know, you can take your own experience, but like sit down with me and watch it. And that made it way easier because then I could structure it. I mean, the structure is obvious. Like the plot of the movie, you know, we walk through the movie and then we take these side quests. So I feel like the simplicity of that narrative, that narrative structure
00:18:17
Speaker
is the thing that allows for the, I guess like the kind of like elaborateness of some of the side quests that I go on. So that, you know, you kind of need that, you need that strong narrative pull through, I guess to kind of like give me the ability to do some of the, you know, I'm kind of wandering pretty far off the path of the movie.
00:18:39
Speaker
And I don't think it worked before I had that kind of strong central narrative framework. Long answer to a short question, but one I thought a lot about, like revising this book. And then I said that back to Grey Wolf and they're like, oh yeah, this rules. Yes. I'm like, hell yes, finally.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, I love that because I've probably, this is weird, I've probably only seen the movie beginning to end once, but I've probably seen the whole movie a bunch of other times just like piecemeal whenever I caught it on TV.
Anticipation of Movie Scenes in Book
00:19:10
Speaker
And you know, you just land on it and be like, okay, well, I guess this is what I'm doing for the next hour and just like watching the rest of the movie. And knowing certain plot points and beats and famous things throughout the book, I remember as I was reading the book too,
00:19:26
Speaker
Having some sort of an experience with it, I'm like, oh, I can't wait until you know, Andrew gets to this part of the movie because I just want to I can't wait to hear how you riff on Billy doing this thing standing on the bridge.
00:19:44
Speaker
Uh, you know, or, or old painless and, uh, Jesse Ventura's character. I'm like, all right, what's he gonna do with this? Cause I know he's gonna get there, but it's like, what's he gonna do with those ingredients and how is he gonna cook with them once he gets there? Like, that was part of the fun for me. Yeah. And that, I mean, it had so many of these iconic moments that are super memorable and they're kind of the set pieces of the movie.
00:20:07
Speaker
And then there's a bunch of stuff that even I kind of don't remember sometimes, like when I watch the movie, I'm like, oh yeah, there's that little bit. But you're kind of waiting to get through the big kind of moments. And like the Billy one is still, it's still like, it's one of the few mysteries that are for me unresolved. Like, I don't know why he dies off screen.
00:20:30
Speaker
I've wondered this for years and I mean, you know, I've got theories about it but like I have no idea like all the other characters die on screen they get an on-screen death and I don't know if that's Because he is is that respect that we're paying him because he's a character that especially in the novelization He's like way deep in like this like spiritual psychological experience
00:20:53
Speaker
And in the movie, he is too. I mean, he's the only one that kind of knows that they're fucked and knows there's something else out there. So is it like, you know, I mean, are we paying him respect by not seeing him like, disemboweled in a cool way? Or is it like racism? Like, because he's the only character we don't get to see die this way? Or is it just like a function of money? Like, you know, they ran out of money and it's like, you know, let's have him die off screen so we don't have to do the, you know, do the effects we need to do for that scene.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I really hope there's an answer out there to this question, and I don't know what it is. And I feel like McTiernan may be the only person, or like John and Jim Thomas, the screenwriters, they may be the only people that can answer this. That's why I hope that the book will eventually find its way to one of them.
00:21:40
Speaker
and maybe I'll get my chance to kind of ask this question somewhere down the line. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, it perplexes me and it's great for there still to be mysteries in the film, even after like 150 times through. Like I remember like there's this, and this is in the book, but like when I was watching, this was in the hundred something time and I finally got
00:22:03
Speaker
Like the joke that I think Hawkins makes, it's Hawkins or Pancho, that makes in the helicopter where Blaine's like, I'm a sexual Tyrannosaurus. And then Hawkins, I think it's Hawkins, it says, why don't you strap that on your sore ass? Which is like a fairly dumb and pun joke thing. But I'm like, oh my God, I finally got this moment in the movie, like the 100 plus time through.
00:22:32
Speaker
And so it's like, yeah, I mean, again, still secrets are there. There are still things that need to be, that I need to find my way to.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I love the exploration that you make about how at first it's an action movie and then it makes a pivot. Especially, there's only really the one super corny action hero line of Arnold's character, Dutch, when he throws the machete against the guy and he's like, stick around. It is such a hilarious line. And the look he has on his face too when he does it is priceless.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, but it's I love I love those explorations you take about like with this movie It starts as one thing and then it does make a turn It's like we need to get some of these action tropes out of the way so we can maybe get to the story We really want to tell and I think that's I mean I found that fascinating
00:23:23
Speaker
as
Action Movies' Deeper Messages
00:23:24
Speaker
I thought more and more about this movie, but also about the nature of action movies and rewatching a whole bunch of the other ones. I set myself the task of rewatching pretty much all the Schwarzenegger movies, which are, for the most part, a real pleasure, although there's a few duds in there. And then thinking a little bit about
00:23:44
Speaker
many of them just kind of reside in their genre and they're easy and they're fun and you could you know I mean they're good movies to watch in the treadmill they're like you're kind of reminiscing while you're watching and then there's movies that are really trying to do something else that you know start out with one thing and become something else and then become something else and those are the ones that I'm most in love with I mean that I think really last for me and I don't know the degree to which that is a function of
00:24:14
Speaker
just look at the kind of Hollywood system, like, you know, you get money to make a quote unquote action movie, but really you have these ideas you want to point out about like the pornography of gun violence. And then so it's like, sure, we'll have these guys like shoot at cock level into the jungle for like a minute and a half. And like a way that, you know, and then when some people watch that, they're like, Oh, that's fucking awesome, because it is fucking awesome. And then but when you realize it, it's like, actually, it's impotence.
00:24:40
Speaker
impotence being enacted on the screen. And I'm like, oh, there's more to that than I thought there was. And then you can see like, yeah, I mean, McTiernan was really trying to do something else with the movie that, you know, but you have to make compromises. You got to have the big action sequence early with a bunch of blowing up shit and all the cool stunts.
00:25:00
Speaker
in order to maybe to kind of like get people into the part of movie that you're more interested in and he didn't even like direct like half of that like the big that big the scene in the gorilla camp that's done by like the second unit um and it has like a very different kind of feel to it
00:25:16
Speaker
And he's kind of shitting on it if you listen to his director's commentary on the Blu-ray that I have. He's just not that interested in that part of the movie at all. And I'm like, that's super weird. Like, you know, you think of it as he made this movie, but of course it's this collaboration with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other people who all have their own agendas and their own skill sets that like, so when you read the piece of art, you're like, oh, like this really is the product of a struggle
00:25:44
Speaker
and also collaboration. I mean, it is like the manly handshake. Everyone's got their own thing they're trying to do. Joel Silver's screaming for more blood. Schwarzenegger, I'm sure, just wants to look fucking awesome as he does. And he's great. I mean, he's so great in this movie. You could see why he's wonderful. But yeah, and then on the screen, they're trying to do their thing.
00:26:09
Speaker
And you're like, okay, you can get all these different messages that coexist in the same artwork. That was kind of a useful, I guess, like way of like training myself to look at movies because I, you know, I mean, I don't know how to make movies. I've never made movies like this is not a form that I come at with an understanding of like what it's like to do it.
00:26:30
Speaker
I come at it from a real nerdy, I'm going to watch it a lot and try to understand aspects of it that are maybe not apparent to me. But if you've been involved in movies, your relationship to this one has got to be really different than mine is, as a 13-year-old viewer watching it for the first time.
00:26:50
Speaker
You know, speaking of creative decisions, it makes me wonder, you know, with the with the manly handshake scene, it's like, you know, because Arnold's got like ungodly biceps and so does Carl Weathers, you know, for that matter. But it's just like the the camera angle we see, we see Dutch, we see Arnold's bicep more than we see. Like we see the outer side of Carl Weathers and we see like the really like
00:27:15
Speaker
Charismatic side of Arnold's bicep, and it just makes you wonder like all right. That's like Well main main character flex right here like literal main character flex you get that you get the greater the greater shock I imagine they probably shot it from any kind of angles, but it like that was the winning one
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think that was, you know, if you listen again to like, there's a little kind of feature right about the making of Predator that's on one of the DVD Blu-ray things that I have. And I mean, I think, you know, you got a bunch of these like hyper macho dudes.
00:27:48
Speaker
all trying to film this thing and they're all like going to the weight room constantly and like getting jacked and working out. And like Schwarzenegger kind of explains, like, you know, I mean, a lot of, well, a lot of what he brings to the table as an actor, you kind of see in an earlier, I don't know if you've seen Pumping Iron, this kind of like scripted documentary, which is wild. I never saw that until like a couple of months ago. And I'm like, holy shit, great movie to watch. But you see him and you're like, oh man, this guy's a star.
00:28:15
Speaker
But he also really brings out the kind of friendly competitiveness in all of his competitors. Poor Looper Igbo in that movie. It's so brutal, but so fun to watch.
00:28:31
Speaker
And he kind of punks, I think Jesse Ventura at some point in Predator. They were having some, I don't know, some cocking where they were trying to each trying to outdo each other with how big their biceps were. And he got someone to report a fake size to Ventura. And Ventura put a bunch of money on it. And then Schwarzenegger, of course, showed up and out flexed him to a degree. And that's kind of great. That feeling of camaraderie
00:29:00
Speaker
and friendly competition. I guess I sort of interpret it as mostly friendly competition because all these guys are jacked as hell, like is part of the fun of the movie watching it. Like you get the sense they really enjoyed making this movie and they really liked working with one another. That I think is partially why it lasts as well as it does against some of those other action movies of the era.
00:29:25
Speaker
And a part of this book, too, that I found really fascinating as kind of a recurring character, if you will, was Paul Monette's novelization of Predator and how you pull that in. Just talk
Homoerotic Undertones in 'Predator'
00:29:38
Speaker
a little bit about that, how you, when you discover the novelization and then, you know, what a, what a, I guess a creative joy that must have been to be able to talk about him at length and fold in the novelization to help
00:29:51
Speaker
sort of cement a lot of the arguments and just bolster the story you wanted to tell here through the movie and through the memoir. So I discovered Manette in a grad school workshop where we were reading books of elegies and we read his book Love Alone among a bunch of other really good but also like depressing books because they're all books of elegies. And someone gave a presentation in that class
00:30:17
Speaker
It was like, yeah, you know, love alone and they're great, great pawns, like really, really like raging, angry poems that he wrote for his lover who was dying of AIDS, which, or who had just died of AIDS, or no, he was in the kind of last stage of that, which the government would, of course, not even admit was a thing. And so one of the bullet points on the handout was, yeah, and he also wrote the novelization for Predator.
00:30:40
Speaker
And I'm like, ah, okay. Like, I mean, that's kind of interesting. And you know, you're in grad school, so it's also like a bunch of people trying to kind of flex on each other with like how they like the most fancy shit, who read the most Lacan or who read like the most demand or whatever. And this was kind of my experience in grad school a little bit, you know, and I was not the most successful one at this, of course.
00:31:03
Speaker
And then later, like a long time later, and I was rewatching Predator, I'm like, what came back was that Paul Manette had written the novelization for it. And I'm like, what? And so then I'm like, oh, I got to track down this novelization, which I found online someplace for like, I don't know, 20 bucks. And I read it and I'm like, because he would go on to win the National Book Award.
00:31:26
Speaker
in nonfiction for, I think, for becoming a man. One of his two memoirs, the first one, which is also very much about the death of his lover and his anger about the government's unwillingness to even acknowledge
00:31:42
Speaker
HIV and AIDS. And so I'm like, well, what did this gay man who was kind of attuned to men's bodies in a different way than I am, what did he see in this movie? So I read their novelization and I really liked it. I mean, it was kind of partially clunky,
00:32:01
Speaker
But a lot of it is just really well written because he's a good poet and knows his way around beautiful images and these great lines and also does a bunch of weird shit that's not actually in the movie because it was based on a kind of early script. So there's a lot of stuff that varies radically from the movie that's pretty interesting if you get into the kind of cosmology of the kind of Alien vs. Predator universe.
00:32:24
Speaker
But then I was rereading it and I'm like, and again, you know, he sees men in a particular way that like, and the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that there really is, I mean, there's like a certainly very homosocial, if not outright homoerotic aspect of this movie.
00:32:41
Speaker
that is really present when you watch it in 2012 or 2022. That was there, I wouldn't have noticed in the 80s. And I was rewatching, I'm like, oh man, there's so much of this, this homoerotic tension
00:32:57
Speaker
in this movie that's built in, and it really does become, I mean, we're looking at that and then looking at Paul Manette's story, you have these twin narratives of these guys being hunted by an invisible predator, denied by the government, seen as expendable by the government, dying out there in the jungle or in America in the case of gay men who died of HIV and AIDS.
00:33:25
Speaker
And I'm like, oh shit, there's a lot of really interesting, overt, I think, relationships between the movie and between his story. And the more I got into it, I mean, the more I read of his work, the more he became a character.
00:33:40
Speaker
Admittedly one that I don't have access to I mean he died, you know some years ago so I spent time then trying to develop him as a character and bring him in and Kind of wonder more about how he experienced the movie and you know, he was actually writing this thing at his lover's deathbed I mean literally he's working on it next to it which is a wild thing to think about and then when you think about that that
00:34:07
Speaker
Then I started thinking about, okay, well, why is the only song in the movie Little Richard on this song that is not about straight men in any way? It's about long, tall Sally, who is long and tall and bald and sneaking around in an alley with
00:34:25
Speaker
Uncle John." And you're like, okay, this is not a straight song at all. And this is the song that they choose, that the guys choose. They're playing it on the boombox in the chopper. This is the only song in the fucking movie. And I'm like, that's wild. I don't know how intentional it is that there are these overtones, that they're kind of there. But when you start to see it, it's really hard to unsee these moments that you could read in a really queer way.
00:34:54
Speaker
They give me a lot of pleasure also to point out to the guys on the internet who love this fucking movie and who have built big parts of their personality around this movie, this movie that the whole time is saying masculinity and big guns is not enough. Y'all are going to get killed by an alien. It makes you a target. That's the point of the movie.
00:35:16
Speaker
are a big part of it. But, like, man, to try to point out to these guys on, like, YouTube that, like, the thing that they're watching maybe is a little gayer than they thought it was is, like, a very satisfying feeling for me to do, to think about. And it's also, and then I start to think about, like, the ways in which, you know, we, like, feel like we own or some aspect of our personality is articulated by
00:35:45
Speaker
this piece of art that we have really strong feelings about. And then the kind of problem with the sort of masculinity that's small enough that can't accept other ways of seeing the thing that you love. And to understand it doesn't make it less, I don't know, straight or butch or hardcore.
00:36:09
Speaker
to see all this other stuff happening in the movie. And I'm kind of entertained by people that get angry about that in there, and that kind of becomes a subject in here. I'm imagining
00:36:20
Speaker
them finding this book and getting pissed about it. And I'm sure I'll get some reviews by some of these guys. And if I don't, like I feel like I've kind of failed. Like, I mean, like I kind of want it. So I hope that it finds its way to them. And what I really hope is that they will, you know, like when if you love Predator, that you reading my book will maybe let you see it in a different way and maybe even let you see yourself in a little different way.
00:36:47
Speaker
which is what the movie does. It lets you see yourself. I mean, it lets us see ourselves through the alien's eyes. And that's my hope for what the book can do. Probably it's not gonna do that for most people, but if it can do that for some, I'll feel like I've succeeded.
00:37:04
Speaker
It's what amazes me too is that with the movie like that and Little Richard's song, from 1986 whenever the movie came out, that was always there. And what amazes me about art, be it books or movies,
00:37:24
Speaker
sometimes those things reveal themselves over time and it blows my mind that they were there all along and like that song has been there all along and then it was just there for someone astute enough to to realize like you say in the book like they are electing to play the song in the chopper like this is on their boombox that they play on a loop to get fired up for their missions and yeah and then you dive into the meaning of the song you're like okay here there are layers here there are multitudes to Predator
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, I mean, it's a thing that I know from, you know, especially rereading books. Yeah. Like, you know, that if you read a book that you read when you were 20 and you read it when you were 30, it's usually a pretty different experience. Totally. And it's like a thing that hasn't happened maybe with me in movies that much, but it totally makes sense because like everything
Art Reflecting Cultural Currents
00:38:16
Speaker
Everything is embedded in the movie, everything of the time in the culture that produced the art thing is embedded in the art thing. And sometimes you can only see that from a ways away, which is one reason like, you know, when we do like these March Exness tournaments, which I think I don't know if we talked about this last time, but like these tournaments like that are basically about writing about music, and memory and culture, like the one rule that we have for those is it has to be at least 10 years old.
00:38:46
Speaker
Because I don't think we can see the moment that we're in, or I'm not smart enough to be able to see the moment that we're in in a way that is illuminating enough. Or maybe I should say the only way for me to illuminate the moment that we're in
00:39:03
Speaker
and what I see in it is by looking at stuff from 20, 30 years ago. It's just so much easier to see the culture when you've moved away from it in various ways, positive and negative. Many positive, but you need that space and time to be able to really see the thing.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I love how you brought up invisible threats. Threat was my word, but you said invisible things, and I have that in my notes, invisible threats. You talk about HIV, but you also bring up climate change, and there are some other things, too.
00:39:45
Speaker
invisible things that manifest in the Predator, who they cannot see, who is their invisible threat manifest in the movie. And I was just like, I wanted to get your sense of how was this idea of invisible threats on your mind as you were synthesizing this book?
00:40:06
Speaker
I mean it was major because like, and I think this is because it's a sci-fi, it's a sci-fi movie. Like all the best Schwarzenegger movies are his sci-fi movies or I guess fantasy. I mean you got to include Conan the Barbarian because that's like a really awesome movie. But like I mean all the best ones for me are the ones that have this other kind of subject matter like Total Recall for sure and The Running Man I think are
00:40:30
Speaker
certainly going to round out the top five. But these stories, sci-fi especially, wants to kind of have us look at aspects of ourselves and of the things that we do from the perspective of some future or from the perspective of an alien or whatever. And I think that's really important to think about. I mean, Predator, it's a movie about hubris.
00:40:55
Speaker
It's a movie about ... It's like an anti-colonial movie. It's like an anti-technology movie. It's certainly an anti-gun movie. All guns do in this movie is make you a threat for the predator. It's like these things that exist in the world that we think of as giving us an advantage or making us who we are.
00:41:16
Speaker
are really of no note. Like, I mean, you can get looked at harder by this thing that's even more badass than you, because there's always something more badass than you. And to not be able to see, like, you know, to see ourselves is kind of the problem and the effects that we're having on the world. And that was what was really funny about like watching, especially Predator 2, because there's a whole, the whole beginning of that movie is like,
00:41:41
Speaker
It's the future, it's LA, kind of like pre, it kind of like sees the LA riots coming actually. And it's like, okay, and it's in the future, it's really hot, things keep getting hotter. It's like, you know, and it's like, okay, that you were 100% correct about that. And there's like an interview with Gary Busey, who's one of the stars of that one.
00:42:01
Speaker
And he's like, you know, it could easily be like 100, 110 in the future. Like, we don't know. And it's like, yeah, pretty prescient, man. And it's like, the hotter you get, the more the predators come, which is canon to the series. It's like they come in the hottest years. So like, there's so much of this that I feel like, I don't know if the movie and then like the other movies in the series and the franchise
00:42:27
Speaker
just sort of saw before other people did or if you just got lucky it was in the culture then and people weren't thinking about it the same way that they are now. But there's everything about it, everything about the movie that I love is about our inability to see ourselves and our ways in which we interact with the world that we're in.
00:42:50
Speaker
And that's the gift that I think the movie gives. And that's what I'm at least trying to enact a little bit by spending a whole book writing about a fucking predator. There's a chapter kind of in the last, I don't know, 20% of the book, too, where
00:43:07
Speaker
where you kind of turn the camera on yourself in a sense, where you're just interrogating yourself, almost asking the audacity you have to even assert some of the things that you're even writing about. Like, oh, it's just like, how interesting do you think your life is to write about yourself this much? And then you go on, it's very short, it's about a page-long chapter, but it's this self-interrogation that comes towards the end.
00:43:34
Speaker
I wonder like you know what was the sort of the motive of that of asking a positing all those questions to yourself and Wondering you know like almost like who the hell do you think you are to even come this far?
Self-Doubt in Memoir Writing
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah, I felt very important to me and I you know I mean I that's a piece I don't know if I would ever read that at like a reading or performance or whatever because it really does
00:44:00
Speaker
You know, it's telling it's speaking some truth to power on the power being me. And like, that was what I started doing was, you know, I'd start writing these poems in the predators perspective. And one of my favorite ones was there was this predator masters convention which shows up in the book.
00:44:17
Speaker
in a different way now where all these guys who quote-unquote like hunt apex predators come and have their convention at like this taxidermy museum in Tucson and they just go out and like shoot coyotes and stuff in the desert which like fucking blows on like I mean it's it's a cowardly thing to do is where I really come down on it I come down like in in the place that Jesse Ventura does when he was running for governor and he's like you know I mean he's
00:44:47
Speaker
And he was a Navy SEAL, and he was pissing off. And he would say things like in the press. He's like, it's cowardly to shoot at things that can't shoot back at you. And in Minnesota, where everyone deer hunts and so on. But he's kind of right. That is a different proposition than actually going to kill a thing that can kill you back. So you have these guys out there shooting in the desert. They're like AR-15s.
00:45:14
Speaker
And, and then like, and I'm like, okay, what would the predator think of that? And the predators not, you know, not impressed, of course. And once you start doing that, I had a bunch of these other predator versus things, because like, that's part of the franchise, too, right? I mean, like, when they like, do alien versus predator, and then it's like, okay, predator can go fight anything.
00:45:33
Speaker
which is really fun. It's a really fun exercise, like narratively and in movies and comic books. And then Predator fights Archie and like the girls, you know, Veronica and Betty, which is actually a really great graphic novel. So and then I had one where the Predator is like, but what if the Predator is in like Alison Bechtel's Fun Home?
00:45:53
Speaker
like where there's no threat that it just like knows how to deal with at all. It's all like emotional and passive aggressive and psychological. And I'm like, what would happen? Like, you know, if you put him in that, he just like gets freaked out. And so as part of that, I'm like, well, like, what does the predator think? Looking at me, like this asshole, like who's spent all this time watching this movie about the predator.
00:46:18
Speaker
And it felt like a fair thing to do. And also a kind of important moment for me to, you know, especially if I'm going to be writing about these things and trying to register the ways in which they hit me then and now and ongoing, then I felt like I did need to, I don't know, aim the predator at myself for a little bit to feel like I'm being honest about the experience, even if it's
00:46:46
Speaker
painful. And I do find that to be painful. It's not one of the pages that I like to reread, but it felt important to have it in there. Because when I sent, I don't know which, if you got one of the versions of the book that has like the VHS slip case on it,
00:47:01
Speaker
that we did a couple of, well, I did like these like kind of wild VHS slip cases that went out with some pre-orders and Grey Wolf has a few of them. And if I'll send you one if you don't have one, but it's like me photoshopped into on the face of Dutch on the cover of the movie Predator, which you could I couldn't have had is that the cover for the book because I would have got sued back to the Stone Age. But like when I put this together and I sent it to my brother and my brother's like, yeah,
00:47:30
Speaker
I see you as more of a Hawkins, not a Dutch. I'm like, ah, you're right. That's a fair point. I'm not a Dutch, but no one wants to see themselves as a Hawkins or a Pancho in this movie. You want to see yourself as one of the
00:47:45
Speaker
one of the big guys, if not the predator. And it's like, yeah, that's the reality of my life. I'm not as hardcore as I would like. And I'm also someone that wrote a book, which is trying to take some shots at memoir as a form. So I'm really aware that when I'm calling this a memoir,
00:48:05
Speaker
that I've, you know, I'm kind of coming back into conversation with Vanishing Point, which is explicitly not a memoir. And part of that is I think, okay, like, who am I to be writing this memoir? It's a question that I would have asked myself in Vanishing Point, and I think I did. And so I felt important to kind of have that echoed here.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah, what I love about it in terms of its form as memoir is that it really it doesn't have those like scene driven elements. The scenes that we see are the scenes of like you watching the movie. It's almost like a it's like it is a memoir of you watching the movie and you go off on these spurs and it has a very it's it's voicey in the best possible way and not very
00:48:48
Speaker
you know, showy, it's very telly, but in a way that really flexes the tell element where oftentimes we're told to show, don't tell, but I feel like this is a great exercise in the power of telling in a memoir.
00:49:02
Speaker
And I mean, I think that's the thing that, you know, my understanding of memoir has changed over the past decade or so. And understanding that the, I mean, really the eye is meant to be the instrument and not the subject. And the instrument, you know, can be as, I mean, voice to me is really important reading memoir. Like that's kind of the only reason that I'm there is for the quality of that lens that we're seeing through.
00:49:30
Speaker
not at the plot of what we're seeing, which is not super important. When I started looking at my life, aspects of my life through this particular lens,
00:49:43
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, actually, there was some pretty fucked up stuff that happened. And I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on it normally, but I'm like, these are the things that I think really made me a fertile field for predator to till.
Personal Experiences and Art Interpretation
00:49:59
Speaker
I don't know if that's maybe not the best way to use the metaphor, but it's like, what opened me up to this movie that it feels so deeply embedded in me?
00:50:11
Speaker
And like trying to unpack some of that seemed important. And I also kind of like the idea of it being a memoir that's basically you're watching a movie with me. It's a memoir of watching a movie that I find funny. So if you're looking for like, I don't know, I have one person that I know who's read pretty much all my work. She was like, yeah, I didn't, it really wasn't that memory. Like I feel like I knew most of these things that showed up in other ways in your other work. Like where are my revelations?
00:50:38
Speaker
about your personal life. And I'm like, God, I feel like there's plenty in here, but it's not that kind of memoir. It's a memoir that's trying to use me as the instrument through which we can watch Predator and you can sit with me on the couch or next to me maybe with the bro seat between us in the theater or not, depending on our feelings about that.
00:51:01
Speaker
And so like that felt important and also like it was a way to kind of tweak what a memoir is. Like that, you know, I like to play with forms. So I like that idea of it's a memoir, but it's not exactly a memoir. And there's a moment early in the book where I just love this little paragraph where you write, I believe that if you look hard and long enough at what you love the best at 14 and how you live then and what you saw in the world, it will reveal both the world and you, or maybe you'll exhaust it.
00:51:31
Speaker
or it'll exhaust you. And I just I love that little that that moment in this in this book about you know latched on to something early on and here's something that you've been you know digesting for for decades now.
00:51:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's, I mean, that's kind of a position paper for a lot of what I believe that nonfiction can do. And I mean, I guess also fiction and poetry. But I mean, that, it doesn't matter what it is, like, everyone's got their predator.
00:52:02
Speaker
You may not know that what you have is your predator, but like everyone has that and if you look closely enough There's the Bruce Weigel poem that I quote in here, which I've quoted before. I just really like that poem You know say it clearly and you make it beautiful no matter what like there is that if you look closely at it it will reveal you and you will reveal it on and that's the job and
00:52:26
Speaker
And I love I really love reading books like this, like that are sitting down and like looking at a thing or playing a game or listening to an album or watching a movie to some degree, although I read fewer of those. But I really like that idea of like experiencing another work of art with someone else because you get to experience both that work of art and the someone else and kind of see like what it brings out of us.
00:52:57
Speaker
Because I think sometimes the things that it brings out of us are not the things that we would have thought it would have, that we would have anticipated going into it. And that's the magic of paying close enough attention to a thing to let it reveal you. That's the magic.
00:53:15
Speaker
And that's something I really recommend. And it's a lot of how I teach nonfiction is trying to get the other, you know, others, like my students to trust themselves enough to be able to, to commit to the thing. Because if you commit to it, like you will eventually start to go inside it and start to lose yourself and then start to find yourself again.
00:53:40
Speaker
I when I was growing up and like my mom had a very sort of demure way of of of saying like don't you know telling me like you know don't rock the boat you know if if things are bugging you just kind of
00:53:56
Speaker
You know, it's best to just kind of push it down. That's what her father told her. It didn't work out well in that sense. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? I grew up in Massachusetts, about an hour south of Boston. She grew up in New York.
00:54:13
Speaker
And I bring this up because a couple years ago, I asked Elisa Gabbard when her latest essay collection came out. And I asked her just about the convictions through which she was making assertions in her book. Like, what's that like? She's like, whoa, what's it like to have a thought? I'm like, well, no. I was someone who just wasn't, that wasn't a cultivated muscle in me. So I always admire people.
00:54:39
Speaker
who can really make these brilliant assertions and put them on the page and really stand by it, and they're just so beautifully articulated. And I think I translated what I was trying to say to her at the time, and I think she kind of walked away. I think she was like,
00:54:58
Speaker
thought I was being critical of her having thoughts. I'm like, no, I'd like admire that you could. And in this book, too, you even say how basically saying, how is it that you even think you're interesting enough to have these assertions? And you just said something when you're talking to your students, teaching them how to trust themselves.
00:55:21
Speaker
So basically what I'm trying to ask is, how did you learn to trust yourself to be able to go out on that limb and to have these assertions and put them on the page and stand by what you say, be it interpretive or comic or whatever?
Trusting Narrative Voice
00:55:39
Speaker
That's a really good question and it's a thing that I've developed over a pretty long time. It was the hardest thing for me to learn when I started writing what I understood as nonfiction. Because my understanding of what nonfiction was, was people that are important and have thought a lot about a subject or deep experts in the subject writing about their inaccessible to me experiences.
00:56:06
Speaker
as an expert and they're all like old and white because that's the only people I'd read in nonfiction and that's so that you know I mean the way that to the degree we had a cannon that was the cannon was like these old white guys like talking about shit that they like you know seemed very knowledgeable about and it took me
00:56:24
Speaker
I mean, a lot of my experience with nonfiction has been exploratory and trying to give myself the rope on the leash to kind of go out there and find out what I actually think about stuff. I remember there was a moment when I was copyediting my first book of nonfiction, which is Neck Deep and Other Predicaments.
00:56:50
Speaker
And at some point my editor was like, okay, so you seem to say maybe or perhaps or I think a lot. And it's like maybe, you know, I mean, maybe take a look at all those like and cut them all because that, you know, it's implicit in what you're doing. And there's a lot of qualification that you're making about a lot of the assertions.
00:57:13
Speaker
Because I didn't know shit. I mean, I still don't really know shit. But to kind of learn to not qualify those, I mean, to understand that it's an early draft thing, that I can venture a thought. And then in the next draft, it's like, okay, I actually feel pretty good about that thought. And I'm willing to kind of stand by it. And so maybe I'll cut the bits that kind of are me tiptoeing out to the ledge.
00:57:39
Speaker
At a vanishing point, I had a kind of other solution, which was I knew there were things in that book that I didn't trust what I said or thought about.
00:57:51
Speaker
at the moment of writing. And so I kind of put these glyphs in the book on certain words that then if you type the words in to my website, they would bring up like additional content, like more evolved thinking or like me coming back to like thinking more about this idea later.
00:58:10
Speaker
And I like that idea of creating this kind of unstable eye that knew it was unstable in these ways and so kind of made a space for me to continue thinking about those ideas. And the more I got into then, I guess, writing about stuff that maybe seemed beside the point or below other people's attention,
00:58:35
Speaker
There's not many people writing about Predator. Although, I mean, there's actually been a decent number of people thinking about the franchise since Prey came out, the latest kind of iteration of it. And because it's the 35th anniversary, there's been some people writing about it. But when I was writing about it, nobody was writing about it. I was like, why are you writing about this crappy Schwarzenegger movie?
00:58:56
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't have an answer except that I'm compelled to do it. And the more that I did that, the more I felt strongly that Predator held all the answers or at least held all the ways of articulating the questions that I wanted to ask. And so, you know, once you do it for a while, you're like, OK, I guess I got to commit. And then you've got to push yourself. And I learned to kind of trust that I could say a thing
00:59:24
Speaker
And then feel more confident in that. So it's like, you know, you're creating an artificial intelligence when you create an eye on the page that gets stronger when you revise. And, you know, I'm from the Midwest, which is why I was kind of asking where you grew up, because like that was
00:59:43
Speaker
certainly my experience was like, I don't know, you don't want to rock the boat. I mean, admittedly, I probably did more of it than I should have. And I kind of messed a bunch of shit up. But it was very much it's like, yeah, I don't know. Don't, don't assert yourself. Like, you just kind of, you know, listen. It's just let other people do the work. And it took a while to kind of come out of that.
01:00:07
Speaker
and feel like at least and maybe you know maybe it's because I'm writing about stuff that seems kind of below other people's notice maybe that's like a defense mechanism like you know I've got that essay about docking in I'll take the answer and it's like nobody gives a shit about docking so immediately when I'm going into writing about docking
01:00:25
Speaker
I'm like, all right. I mean, I can say whatever I want about docking because you already assume it's going to be uninteresting or like kind of lame. So I get to like, if I can make you care about docking, then that's that's a big win for me. And it's kind of how I feel about Predator 2. I should say Predator also because I'm, you know, there may be Predator 2 memoir coming down the line. But it's like that idea of like, if I can get you to care about this thing,
01:00:51
Speaker
that either you care about and don't see my way, or you don't think, you don't care about at all, you're like, then I become like a kind of evangelist for it. And it's like, I want people to care about this thing that maybe they didn't care about before, which requires some strong statements and a willingness to kind of really put yourself out there as an instrument that's going to be fun to play with as we go into the book.
01:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a fun book and I had the benefit of knowing enough about the movie to really read it with that anticipatory eye of like, I'm loving where Andrew's taking me and I can't wait till he gets to this point because I can't wait to see what yarn is going to be spun from that set piece. And it was just such a treat to read in that regard.
01:01:46
Speaker
So I want to be mindful of your time here.
Snack Food Recommendations
01:01:50
Speaker
And as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I love asking the guests for a recommendation for the listeners of some kind. So, Andrew, I extend that to you. What would you recommend to the listeners out there? Okay. So I'm going to open this up. You're going to get a little bit of a crackling sound.
01:02:07
Speaker
this is um i would like to recommend a bag of chips nice i spend a lot of time i've been doing a lot of time over the last couple years kind of is like a pandemic side project i guess uh like kind of reviewing new chips that i run across
01:02:24
Speaker
It's a lot of what I do on Instagram as I post reviews of these chips and then various predator content and occasionally some assessment matters stuff. But I'd like to recommend Takis Kettles. Takis are like the kind of like rolled chips that are pretty good.
01:02:40
Speaker
They're kind of extreme, but these are these kettles with a Z. So K-E-T-T-L-E-Z, which is pretty stupid. But they've made a kettle chip, and the flavor is jalapeno typhoon. And man, these things are really good.
01:02:55
Speaker
They're delicious. I ate like half a bag last night because they're not, you know, I'm not like, I'm not a big hot, spicy person. Like, I mean, I like a little spice, but I like the flavor and they have this delicious jalapeno flavor. Very strong, very salty.
01:03:13
Speaker
But they don't overwhelm, like you can just eat a bunch of these chips and just get a nice jalapeno feeling without it blowing up your mouth or your digestion, which is what a lot of chips kind of do. And I really love them. In spite of their stupid name, I would eat any other talk. I think I had a guacamole talkie when I was in Michigan, and that was really good too.
01:03:35
Speaker
So I guess I'm in for Takis now in a way that I was not before. But yeah, check out the Takis Kettles jalapeno typhoon if you can get them where you are. Or you could tune into my Instagram for a review that'll probably be happening in the next couple days. I love it. It's like the guy who was doing sync reviews on some website, I guess, on social media platform. I can't remember what. Now we can tune in for chip reviews. I love it.
01:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's like it's a good side project. Like, why not? Again, it's like probably not good for my health. So this may actually my doctor's like, maybe you should lay off these for a while. But, you know, I mean, that's that, you know, got to suffer from my art. Exactly. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for coming back on the show to talk all things Predator in this book, which is incredible. So, yeah, thanks so much for the time. Thanks for coming back on the show. And I wish you the best of luck with it, man. All right. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
01:04:36
Speaker
a fancy effort he's at anger monsoon on twitter and instagram the name of the book again is predator memoir a movie in obsessions published by gray wolf everybody's favorite publisher
01:04:51
Speaker
First person to link up to this episode and tag at CNF pot on Twitter with the Dutch and Dylan handshake Twitter gif. They will win my copy of Anders book. First one I see pops up first one in the timeline of those mentions. I will reach out to you, get your address and send you my book, my copy of Anders book. That's your mission.
01:05:17
Speaker
and potential prize for making it to the end of the show and listening all the way through. See it pays to listen all the way through. You can be rewarded for listening all the way through.
01:05:30
Speaker
Yesterday was my last day as the opinion page editor at the register guard newspaper.
Career Reflections and Future Plans
01:05:38
Speaker
After nearly three and a half years editing guest views, writing the occasional column when I felt like it, editing letters to the editor, I started the job with
01:05:49
Speaker
It was always part-time, but it was 34 hours, making $18.50 an hour, which is okay, I guess. I was part of an editorial board with a publisher and executive editor, and my technical title, so I didn't get paid too much, was assistant opinion page editor, but there was no opinion page editor, so I was assistant to nobody. That's how I get paid the $18.50.
01:06:15
Speaker
Anyway, then Gannett took over the paper in 2020, yay, dissolved the editorial board, staying on brand, and left me dangling there as the last opinion page editor this paper will ever have. Soon, the opinion section went from eight pages over seven days when I started to four pages over three days, and then quickly after that, it went to three pages over two days.
01:06:44
Speaker
for a very active and engaged community like Eugene, Oregon, that did not go over well. So the rage was real that I would always feel. What am I to do? I'd be like, connect, connect, connect. Hours went from 34, I guess at the beginning, then to like 30, then about 20, and to about 15, all the while.
01:07:05
Speaker
Making $18.50 an hour for the last three and a half years. So I effectively just was docked. And that's how I avoided the bean counters, I think. I was cheap, reliable. I had applied for a food and entertainment writer position a few months ago at my own paper.
01:07:23
Speaker
And I felt I had a real good chance at it. But it turns out I was only interviewed as a courtesy. I wore a tie and everything. It was a video interview. I wore a tie. And people who interviewed me looked like they had just come from the gym. You know, sweatshirts. Didn't care. I was like, oh boy, this will go well.
01:07:45
Speaker
After the interview, I wrote them emails saying how excited I was to try out this new beat and to really hit the ground running. I was like my brain is popping with ideas.
01:07:56
Speaker
After a few weeks after not hearing anything, I was like, okay, what's happening here? I asked what the status was, and they said they wanted someone with more story ideas and more excitement for the beat, and I was like, oh, that doesn't align with what I had said, and certainly the energy I brought to the interview. I later found out they didn't want to hire someone who was primarily a writer by trade, though, as you know, I'm an audio maven.
01:08:22
Speaker
They wanted someone with more video experience, I think, but more than anything, they wanted to bolster their diversity numbers, and someone of my makeup is not going to do that. So that was the main reason right there, and I get it. I'm not against it, but it does suck when you're very qualified, when you're qualified for a position like that.
01:08:42
Speaker
So that was the beginning of the end for me. I realized I was just some cheap at $18.50 an hour and that I wasn't going anywhere at the paper. So then Gannett reported really shitty profit margins and then closed all open positions and laid off even more people. I sort of snickered because now there was no food and entertainment reporter position at all to even apply to.
01:09:07
Speaker
And a lot of people who they were going to offer the job to turned it down because they took too long to do it. I think they made a mistake not hiring me. I have institutional knowledge, regional knowledge. I've been here for a while. I've been at the paper. I get the culture. But Gannett loves to hire a young 20-something that can underpay and overwork them until they take a job in PR.
01:09:29
Speaker
So no animus towards the people I sort of worked with, because those are really on my own. I left what I call a dead-end job, and boy was it ever a dead-end. So now I'm going to focus on my freelancing and start my own thing. Bought a domain and everything. It's going to be kind of a cool thing. It's going to just start with me. Maybe it'll go elsewhere. Who knows? So hopefully I'll have more news to report on that project in the coming months.
01:09:57
Speaker
The lance is free, as they say, C&Fers. I will be on the road next week driving cross country with the dogs, heading east to help my sister, sell my mom's house, and see my mom whose plunge into dementia is escalating. So there will likely be no new episode on October 14th, a week from today. So in the meantime, stay wild, C&Fers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
01:10:42
Speaker
you