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What I've Learnt - Elliot Perlman · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Passionate, witty, vulnerable, intelligent, and honest.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Critics describing the work of best-selling author Elliot Pillman.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Full disclosure, I've known Elliot for almost 40 years.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of my oldest and dearest friends.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: A born storyteller, I recall many school lunchtimes and weekends, Elle writing, creating scripts, novelas, and songs, as one of the only other writers I knew, I was truly inspired.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was while practicing law in 1994 that he won the AIDS short story competition for the reasons I won't be coming, which became the titular story of his best-selling short story collection.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: In it, he explores complex worlds of lovers, poets, lawyers, immigrants, students, and murderers, the corporate portrayals, the lost opportunities, the hopes, the fears, and the vagaries of design.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: It would jettison him into the global literary world and see him go on to write a further four best-selling novels, spend nine years as a New York-based writer and swap out his law career for his passion to become a fully-fledged, successful published author.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: His debut novel, Three Dollars, is a deft portrait of a man attempting to retain his humanity, his family, and his sense of humour in grim and pitiless times of downsizing, outsourcing, and privatizing.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: The big screen adaptation, co-written by Pearlman, directed by Robert Connolly, and starring David Wenham and Francis O'Connor, was awarded the 2005 Australian Film Industry Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: In seven types of ambiguity, following years of unrequited love and an out-of-work school teacher takes matters into his own hands in a story of obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialism.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: His next book, The Street Sweeper, recently released from prison Lamon Williams, an African-American janitor in a Manhattan hospital and father of a little girl he can't locate, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly patient, a Holocaust survivor who had been a prisoner in Auschwitz.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: As these two men try to survive in early 21st century New York, history comes to life in ways neither of them could have predicted.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't stop there.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Elliot's recent foray into a children's literature series, Catfinkel, is described by the Sunday Age as a charming and whimsical tale with gentle lessons about empathy, bravery, and friendship.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Elliot is a wonderful mix of down-to-earth authentic Australian and fierce intellectual.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: As a teenager and an avid Carton fan, he wrote an ode to his favourite carton player called I Wanna Be Like Stephen Silvani, something we all ended up singing at recess, yet he'd create mixtapes of the latest, greatest bands and give you an extensive list, if not the actual books, of his latest top ten books you must read.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And well, of course I did.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I credit Elliot with enculturating most of us and giving us all the critical, satirical, sometimes comical lens through which to view the world.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: His recent best-selling novel, The Horsewood Talk, is an exemplification of this incisive, comical, timely, and engaging skill.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Elliot has always had a talent for capturing the moment and tapping into the zeitgeist.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now optioned by Paramount Television, his latest novel is palpable and relatable.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: As Elliot says, I thought, let's tell a story of adults in this incredibly precarious world of work where so many people are subject to what gets called work-family conflict, that situation where the demands of the world of work are incompatible with the demands of family and social bonds.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't properly satisfy both, and that's the case whether you're experiencing overwork in a competitive workplace or insufficient work and insufficient income in the ever-growing, ever-threatening sideshow that is the gig economy.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: At the heart of his novel, Perlman has created an environment where workers are in constant fear of being sacked by their all-powerful, unstable overlords, where sexual harassment is routine and corruption is rife.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Material all gleaned from Perlman's own early days as a lawyer and by talking to younger lawyers and professionals today.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: His main character, Stephen Messerov, has problems.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: A one-time teacher married to fellow teacher Eleanor, he is retained and is now a second-year lawyer.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Despite toiling around the clock to make budget, he's in imminent danger of being downsized.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And to make things worse, Eleanor, sick of single-parenting their two young children, thanks to Stephen's relentless work schedule, has asked him to move out.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage, and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: As one of my favourite people in the world, I'm in awe of Elliot's drive, determination, and courage.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: As a storyteller, he taps into the social fabric and psyche, always questioning and sensitively and empathetically, carving his characters with the love and tenderness of a true artisan.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, Elle, welcome to the What I've Learnt Podcast.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, thank you.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: That might be the nicest introduction I've ever had.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't just mean in any form of media, I mean in my personal life as well.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's only one thing I have to correct, which you I'm I'm happy to admit this, but you might not be.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: We've been friends much longer than 40 years.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm glad that's the only correction that you have because that's the only correction.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think you are probably correct.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I will definitely amend that.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I will make a little notation.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, you know, I have such great memories, and it is very true that, you know, when it was sort of not that cool, you and I were exchanging books and writing and and talking about scripts, and you were always, I think it's you're right, it's probably back to grade six.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh form one.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Form one or two.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they call it year seven now.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Year seven or year eight, yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think it it began initially with music, Deb.
• 6:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're you're a musician and uh you now live in a family of musicians that you've created.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I am what I have taken to calling a failed musician.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I I I could never sing as well as you.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, um my father used to say that people should pay me not to sing, and that I could do quite well in the music industry if you could earn a living through people paying you not to sing.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he didn't hear did he hear um I I want to be like Steven Silvani?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Steven Silvani.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny that you mentioned very few people know that, but um because and this will kind of show listeners just how incestuous it was.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was playing that song in a band where your brother was the drummer, and I think that was the favorite of my songs for him.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And my father, who uh you know, um terribly influential on me and and um, you know, both my biggest fan and my biggest critic, but he and I've sort of absorbed so many of his opinions and views and worldview.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the one area that immediately comes to mind that is so different between me and him is that I think he thought that music kind of stopped uh around the time of Frank Sinatra.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, you know, possibly the Beatles, but that's kind of him being a little generous.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he thought all the music I was not only listening to, but certainly the music I was trying to make, and probably including music I tried to make with you, um, as a not terribly gifted bass player, um, he thought that was just a cacophony of noise.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there was one occasion, it was probably one of the last gigs I ever played, uh, with my band that had your brother as the drummer.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um he'd heard about this humorous song Um Stephen Silvani, which was um, and for for listeners of the podcast who are uh either not that old or not into AFL football, Stephen Sylvani is part of a lineage of great AFL football players from a certain club.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um we can say Carlton.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Carlton, yes.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'm a I'm a tragic of that club, uh, in part for historical reasons because my grandparents, uh, when they came from Poland, they settled in Carlton, and that's that's where that started.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and my father wanted to hear, he said, you know, he he was doing me a tremendous service by coming to a an inner city pub with, you know, beer, you know, the carpet had been watered with beer in an attempt to make more carpet grow.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um he said, Look, look, it wasn't so bad.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, he was really trying to be generous.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I just wish you'd played that funny song you wrote about Stephen Sylvani.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I said to him, I did.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: To him, it was just a wall of sound, and uh he just missed it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Good old Harry missed it.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he missed it, yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But what I do love about this chat is that there, you know, you have written some very powerful, serious, somewhat comic novels.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what's good for our listeners to see and hear is first of all, what a football tragic you are, which is good because it also shows your.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that because I think the wonderful thing that you have, as I mentioned in my introduction, is the combination of ferocious intellect and great reverence, you know, great reverence for the greats like Hardy and all of these amazing literary uh figures, but also an understanding of the importance of sport and loving your footy team and just being an Aussie.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I love is you're that mixture of those two.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they've probably balanced you.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like you haven't, it's allowed you to.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I remember my mother said to me once, um, and she was an English teacher, and she said, I I don't understand you.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're obsessed with football, but you read poetry.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I don't understand why there's a necessary contradiction there.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, why why can't you love both?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, it it it it we're we're told that they're two, there's a stereotype of a person that um, you know, one is say obsessed with sport and the other is obsessed with the arts, yeah, per se.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and um, you know, that those two people are not supposed to get along.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in fact, they they kind of coexist in me.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I, you know, and and really, I mean, if if you think about sport for a minute, and um, you know, I know when I describe it as I'm about to, I run the risk of you know, sports lovers losing their their love of the game, but it's really a narrative.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's um it's a a magnificent story, or that's what you're hoping for when you go and watch a game.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're hoping for a magnificent story, a narrative that's full of drama, where in in with people using their skills and their fitness and their their experience of the game, they are one hopes, exemplifying what you'd like to exemplify in your whole life.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they're gonna do it in a split second, you know, courage or persistence, determination or skill.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you very rarely get to see a person's whole life, but you can see this exemplified in a, you know, that the person that was for a moment outnumbered by the opposition and they kept trying anyway, and they achieved a positive result, and you just uh are filled with admiration for them, and it has an effect on you which is positive.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that, in a way, is one of the things you want art to do.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there isn't necessarily a contradiction there, I don't think.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and in fact, I love your correlation and I love the way you've drawn that bow because I think it makes a lot of sense.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hence the, you know, they often talk about sport as like a religion and that that fandom and that absolute um uh dedication.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for you, if we go back to you starting out, um, and I have really clear memories, I know that you're always somebody, and maybe football did in some ways um some of the things that you've pointed out make a lot of sense in terms of what I saw with your enormous drive, focus, dedication.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about some of your early experiences, and also I think a very important reference is expectation and anxiety, both of which feature in a football game.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, in you starting out, you were always somebody who was just so determined to um, well, I know there was an element of anxiety, but in a way that became your fuel.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me a little bit about that.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it it it's um it's funny because again, for listeners who might not know, um, although we we, you know, since you've started this podcast, we had always wanted to to do an interview together, but I didn't know exactly what you'd want to talk to me about.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you sent me some sort of broad areas, and it led me to ask myself, you know, um, and and you know, you run, I run the risk of being overly self-analytical and um uh uh inaccurately so because A, I'm not a trained psychoanalyst, and B, you're always um uh it's subjective when you're looking at yourself.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: But having said those, having issued those qualifications, um, I think when I I think of my childhood, and um there were, and this might this was probably even before I met you, Deb, when I was still really young, very young, there were multiple life-threatening health crises in my family from a very early age, and and and because of that, a sense of fear and a sense of loss that was really palpable to me very early on.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, as as as you know, because you you know me well and have known me for such a long time, uh, my parents had a pretty unhappy marriage, which led to uh an even more unhappy divorce with all of its ripple effects, and all of this sort of threatened my sense of family, and also uh really was an assault on my personal equilibrium, I guess.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then because of my my family uh sort of the the larger, the macro family, there were echoes of the Holocaust.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this sense of um potential tragedy at any at any moment.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: The um now as we're doing this podcast, I'm not gonna remember the author who uh gave us the wonderful title.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um is it is it Grace Paley?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um enormous changes at the last minute.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, you just as soon as you hear that, you think, yeah, well, I I so understand that.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the um the anxiety that something's gonna happen, it's gonna be sudden.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got to brace it, you've got to brace yourself for it, yeah, and it's probably gonna be very bad.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what's the only thing that's worse than any of that is if it's your fault, which uh you know can happen, and and you and and that you get an extra dimension to that when you become a parent, as you know, that uh it is one thing for something terrible to happen to your child, but it's that much worse if if you did it, or you or you should have seen it coming.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I think I think it was um it was that background that led me to seek um so you know obviously I I'm Jewish on both sides, but I'm not and never was religious, and my family wasn't um you know religious either.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in the absence of otherworldly spiritual comfort, I was lucky enough to experience what might best be described as a sense of awe from all of music, theater, cinema, television, and especially literature.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And by awe, I mean a feeling of genuinely reverential respect uh for a particular book, a piece of music, a play, a short story, often mixed with a kind of wonder, literally wonder, how did the artist achieve that?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: How did he or she or they move me?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: How did they affect my thinking and my feeling, my emotional state?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I really was, it wasn't just a sort of a you know philosophical or academic musing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I thought what techniques did they get me from A to B to C to Z, um intellectually and emotionally, and and it led not merely to a sense of wonder, but to a sense of gratitude and then a sense of possibility.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: How good would it be to be able to help other people with some or other act of creativity as much as I had been helped by art?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do it literally?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I came to realize that it wasn't just enough to want it, you had to practice it.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: You had to be willing to give up other things that you like doing.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, often you have to be willing to spend long periods of time by yourself, and of course, you have to be willing to fail.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's so true, and it's very interesting you say that because Jane Harper refers to the exact same issue that you have to be prepared to fail, to throw your hat in the ring and say, I'm gonna give it a go.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also, one other just point on what you've just said, I think the other thing that I observed is that also arts has given you, the arts have given you great comfort.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They've given you a sense that you are there's a there's a history of that tragedies are intrinsic to art often, and that that you know you are not alone in the world and that your journey, I mean, I think we all find that.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, even through the COVID crisis, I've interviewed many, many artists, musicians, actors, authors, and they all talk about exactly what you describe.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, what is it that we all turn to dramatically through COVID for comfort for all of the things you're talking about?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: The arts, which ironically needs enormous funding to get through it still.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is, it became what satiated us all, similarly to what you're describing.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Totally, Deb, totally, absolutely.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's almost a um a psychological basis to this that's been demonstrated scientifically, that um if you have something, and it and art is is perhaps the best uh um the best tool for this, that sheds a different light on experience that is either exactly yours, but really doesn't have to be yours.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: It can be slightly similar to you, but it it it uh it uh sheds uh it gives you perspective and you realize that even if you are temporarily alone in your circumstance, uh in the river of human history, uh you're not alone.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh other people are going through the same thing as you at the very time you're going through it, let alone people that have gone through similar things uh before you and people that will go through it after you.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, there isn't necessarily the solution to a particular problem that you're having right here and now, which could be in need of a very practical solution, but there is the comfort that will give you the distance to start to say, okay, uh, this is where I rule the line over my uh under my own agony and my own pain.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to now recognize that other people have felt this sort of thing.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: What are the practical steps that I can take?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm now in a position to do something to improve my situation or to help other people because my pain has been somewhat ameliorated by the recognition of something greater than me.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that the universality, the universality of that experience, do you think?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that we we are we are connected in in so many ways, and that um you know it you there is nobility, there can be.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: nobility in the recognition of your own pain and vulnerability and vulnerability and with that with that um using that nobility as a painkiller if you like to recognition painkiller you can start to to get on and improve things in your life and I think that's kind of um when I was very young and this might surprise people but um my parents were worried because in early to mid-primary school I wasn't a huge reader and remember my mother was an English teacher and my um father was an academic physicist who who read a lot um and you know the house was sort of wallpapered with bookshelves filled with books from all over the world and different times and eras um and yet while my sister who's four years older than me was voraciously reading consuming Enid Blyton books I started to read those books and I thought you know what um the famous five you know um five go up a tree yeah they have lemonade they go down the tree not that exciting I hear you I hear you I was not enid blind either I totally hear you and so it led me to think uh you know what this business of reading it's it's a con.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that good you know I mean I can I yes I read they went up the tree they went down the tree it's uh uh not for me and I think in part it was you know because it was sort of uh practically it it read like Victorian England and it had no relation to anything in my life you know where where was the anxiety where was the divorce where where was the trauma yeah where was the trauma exactly yeah um where was the self-doubt um so but then uh I started to read uh you know maybe 10 or 11 around 10 or 11 books that um my mother was teaching and she taught um uh HSC you know VCE as it's now called the the fine English in the final year of of high school and those books were obviously more sophisticated than the books I was meant to be reading and I'm not suggesting I understood all of all of them but the subject matter was the underdog and uh inequality and unfairness and you know a an example for for people of our golden age yes generation yeah uh you know was was Kes a Kestrel for a knave do you remember that I certainly do yes I do you know he was um you you just felt such tremendous and of course I had nothing or very little in common with a uh a very skinny boy from the north of England um you know who was living in I came from a middle class household but the idea of um of his suffering I thought wow you can you can write about that and then uh I read um a day in the life of Ivan Denisevich by Solzhenitsyn um and because my mother was teaching it and of course the only books I wanted to read were the books I was not permitted to read and the only books I was not permitted to read in a very progressive household were the books she needed because she was teaching them.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know on page one I think it is Ivan Denisevich is in his cell and he captures an insect and he eats it and I thought this is fantastic the guy's eating an insect and they're gonna give the author the Nobel prize um he's written about a guy eating an insect I'm totally there.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to really eat an insect but I certainly want to spend yeah I want to spend time with a guy who does eat an insect because because that's the best thing going.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I I can't I realized this is fantastic that you're taken to other worlds and other places and you can immediately see yourself as part of something grander than just uh yourself.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: But hence yeah this this all goes back very much to what I was referring to in the intro which is your extraordinary sensitivity and empathy and I think without those two barometers often that is what in a sense and I often say this to people you need the anxiety around those to be effective at resonating empathy like it's okay because in a sense that's what you're very good at.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And hence your latest book is a very good example of that an exemplification of that very ability to look around you when you're a young lawyer and go, wow, there's a lot of strange things going on and there are people suffering that empathy which what other people would see as quite mundane your barometer is quite extraordinary in that way.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well you know I mean uh economically it might have been better for me if I could just shut up and uh be a lawyer yeah not you know uh not be affected but but I knew um I I knew that I couldn't have a life in one of those um mega city commercial law firms um and and straight away you saw unfairness you saw cruelty you saw bullying and you saw sexism you know um some people have in Australia when talking about maybe the horse will talk suggested that I was prescient but you know uh when has sexual harassment ever not been there so it didn't feel prescient to me.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean yeah it's obviously getting more attention now thankfully than it's ever got before but but it was always there.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So uh if you're gonna write about the toxic workplace which is really what I set out to do in Maybe the horse will talk um you you've got to include sexual harassment because it's such a big part of it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um yeah I mean I I saw appalling behavior from senior members of the legal profession.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and you're in a sense you're you're conned because um for all that I had read I was kind of naive because you you think ah well this is the stuff of drama you know whether it's in in film or television uh literature but obviously in the law firm where I'm going to work people won't behave like that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well we know it happened in the high court it happens in parliament it's you know so it it you it was naive of me to be surprised to see this sort of thing going on and I knew uh well I this whatever's going to happen to me in my life it won't be I can't spend significant portions of my life in this environment and I could not understand how other people were were able to do this at least for a time and it was as though they had drunk the Kool-Aid well that's how yeah I I saw and and I didn't have a name or a label for it initially and I think what it it it testifies to the unbelievable power of conformity the need people have to fit in and you know there are psychopaths everywhere and uh it can lead obviously to to fascism to narazism to all kinds of brutal political regimes and you ask yourself when the regimes are over how could this have happened and to a certain extent the fuel comes from extremists but it's it's sustained by people who are willing to turn a blind eye rather than stand out.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that you know that's a realization that's come to me uh you know well in adulthood at least um it's not that there are so many people that are cruel but they are terrified and um and paralyzed as a result in taking action I mean it's like if you look at what's happening just to bring it into the present obviously what's happening at the moment um is I mean first of all you couldn't have tapped the zeitgeist more than you have in this particular book because it's very reflective of what's going on which you know you completely took you five years to write is that right is that correct?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well I I started uh I started making notes for the novel came out in 2019 I started making notes for it in 2012.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Quite extraordinary but you you know you obviously as you say it's been around for a long time those issues but your characters are just so um they they're great because I think what you do is you take the ordinary man and put him in an extraordinary circumstance in which he has to find a way to navigate.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And actually what you're saying is most of us are like that.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us are actually just on this river of life trying to navigate and it's a question of whether you stop at that particular juncture and say wait that's not right or I need to act on that very thematic with what's going on now with parliament and you know all of the um the outcries regarding I mean more stories coming out about sexual harassment and rape.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty confronting.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know we we um it it is a question of of whether you're going to be the kind of person that speaks up or does something or whether you're going to try and go along to get along and you know there's um I think I think there's a a book with the title the paradox of stupidity or the the stupidity paradox that um in the very short term it it's it's sensible to do nothing for yourself.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know if you if you if you think well I want to get ahead professionally and I want to earn an income it may it's rational for you not to help anybody but it's not moral.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sooner or later you will be swallowed by it not necessarily um you know you might not be sexually harassed yourself but someone in your family will or someone you care about or you'll be affected by the general corrosion of ethics in the society that you're living in anyway.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you know if you think about the way you are you raising your children to be the kind of people that will um just survive or people that will make a difference.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know there will come a time in each person's life where they have to ask themselves what kind of person they are.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Are you the kind of person that uh is going to hide and hope that this washes over you are you indeed the kind of person that's going to participate in the cruelty or are you the kind of person that's going to try and do something about it to fix the situation.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I I saw and it was to my surprise maybe quite naively so many of the people that I'd gone through law school with were just prepared to shut up.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: But there are themes I mean many of your books have themes about this the characters um whether it's Street Sweeper or whether it's um Stephen Masarov, you know, they're they're about that many of the themes are about what you're talking about, which is are you going to be a bystander?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are you going to be somebody who takes action was that a conscious thing are they the are they your it wasn't a conscious thing dead but I realized as I kind of look back over um you know as as the the the writing sort of adds distance or creates a distance between uh the time you set off on your creative journey if you like and where you find yourself now I think well what do they have in common?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: They tend to be marriages of the personal and the political and they tend to raise uh those kind of moral or ethical questions what what are you going to do?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what does a good person do?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: A person who's trying to be uh ethical and behave morally in uh at least ambiguous times if not unequivocally um uh immoral times and um you know I mean uh at the risk of dating this interview um you you you can't sort of have a look at a newspaper uh any day without being stunned at the institutions that are sullied by this and then but the the stupidity of people and how do people get into positions of power?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I guess I'm no longer naive enough nothing will really surprise me anymore but back then uh when I was a you know baby lawyer uh I was surprised because I hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid of the um of the law firm per se but I guess I had drunk the Kool-Aid of the profession to believe that since um lawyers are meant to be all about upholding the law and the law is there to protect society that we are in a sense um gatekeepers.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Gatekeepers yeah gatekeepers in a moral sense and um you know uh you know clearly you you can't rely on anybody by by virtue of there's no profession that said oh well at least those people are safe you know at least you can trust those people you can rely on them because um anybody can do anything well I think you've always been discerning you've always been I would say at times cynical in terms of you know making sure that you assess things not taking everything at face value which is part of your skill because in doing that you can unravel and you can actually go, wait, this is not quite what I thought it was and this is what you're referring to.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But on a on a sort of another note I've also known you for many years and I think that you're also a bit of a chronic romantic.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that there's also something I've observed over the years, whether it's the mixtapes you used to make for everyone or the you know you would find songs or love songs that um that really nobody had heard of um but you would find and even if it was you know the clash and there was a love song you'd find it do you know what I mean or or joy division you know um a really beautiful you know love will tear us apart you know that was your sort of um something that we all just would never have known about had you not brought it to to our attention how has love heartache loss I'm talking about love loss shaped you and many of your stories it's funny that you say that I I have been a chronic romantic because some people have seen me as a chronic cynic and and I think well what is a cynic but a former romantic devastated to the point of critical vulnerability by an onslaught of pain or disappointment.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: The cynicism is then a protection of sorts a coat an armor and the danger then is that the armor numbs you it it shields you too well from your humanity and for a writer for any artist this is a professional disaster and really for any human being it's a catastrophe because it can it can quarterise your humanity so as as you so often have to do in life you you need to find a balance between the the siren song of two extremes you can wake up one morning and hear something and you think yeah they're completely right and then you could wake up another morning and hear the other side of it and think that side's completely right.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course probably neither side is completely right and you you have to kind of call upon some sort of um uh I don't know maybe it's wisdom to to to ground yourself and say hang on I I I shouldn't be too much enthralled to romanticism or cynicism um why why did the romantic appeal to me um yeah uh I I think it appeals to look obviously I mean you know it appeals to so many people uh maybe men are certainly then and maybe still now um are less inclined to admit it I was probably less um uh backward in in admitting vulnerability especially to good friends like you um and I and I think you know the arts helped that because it meant uh you know if you're gonna say oh I'm in this I'm in this club with these people called writers or musicians or artists of some kind and one of the things we do is we admit we're vulnerable.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not alone even in that if if you like and that gives you a certain um courage that maybe and you know this is starting to change in sport with you know men being asked to talk to each other about depression and mental illness but um I think there is a movement now time will tell how successful it's going to be towards getting men to admit greater vulnerability rather than just the sort of the stoicism of the the quintessential macho football hero but um in in my early life I think I tried to navigate a world in which um well say by loving popular music so much of popular music is about um romantic pain so you you have trouble you know admiring singing writing about romantic pain then the the guitar strum fades away and you act like oh but that's not me that song I just wrote about you know feeling rejected uh I don't know where I got that from you know so you you know I I think maybe art helped me to uh to talk about it more than maybe other men or at that time boys of our generation I I don't know I'm I'm speculating I'm being uh but I think it's true what you say because I think well there is a change but also you're right the arts let's be honest some of the greatest love songs and the greatest you know some of the greatest songs ever and some of the greatest literature ever really have love as their counterpoint wherever or or their central central theme whether it be losing it gaining it declaring it I mean that's sort of very much and you're right in some ways the arts gives license to allow that expression as have many of the people I've interviewed said whether it's yeah yeah and and that of course makes it so healthy so beneficial um also for the people creating it you know I think uh it's it it it probably has saved me and on that on that note who who is I know I know many of your mentors but could you maybe just highlight um one or two other than I know Harry, your father who's a great mentor of course yeah my father is um it's funny because people again have you know said my politics are very progressive and I must be quite radical but the funny thing is I have adopted as with the possible exception of music um and and some literature and you know some of the arts but um or examples of the arts but essentially my political views are his um and and so in that respect in a very personal sense I've been quite conservative because I'm just uh not without thought but I am perpetuating views that the previous generation had which is a a kind of almost a definition of conservatism in a personal liberalism liberalism yeah well uh you know uh liberalism with a with a small L I should say yes of course you know I guess progressive politics but um
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh so my father also I think was strangely enough, because you know he was very worried about you know um the impecuniosity that comes with being an artist, um, for for me, he was nonetheless incredibly encouraging of my writing.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he's uh he's been my first reader of practically everything I've written.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And in the early days, when I started to write um, you know, quasi seriously when I was at university, and it seemed, you know, it was socially acceptable, you'll remember, Deb, to tell people that you couldn't meet someone for a coffee or a drink because you had band practice, or you were going to play in a team sport, you had um football practice, or yeah, you're gonna play someone, gonna play tennis or something.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't socially acceptable to say, I'd look, I'd love to meet you for coffee, but I can't because I have to go home and perfect a paragraph.
• 45:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know it very well.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know it it was that's why, in some ways, you and I were very much drawn to each other, as were some of the other um artistic people, because you're right, it wasn't something that it sort of wasn't cultivated as a profession or a choice.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, back then, even then, um, as long as we had known each other, um, and as much as we'd sort of shared a love of all sorts of arts, um, I would tell you I was playing in a band, you knew that you were playing music around town as well.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we played together, and as I said, your brother was in um one of the incarnations of the bands I played in.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um he uh I I still probably at that time didn't admit to you that I was writing short stories because I was embarrassed.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um not even of the a particular short story, but embarrassed that I was doing something that was sort of so apparently uncool.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I mean you would have you would have appreciated and liked it, but but I probably I didn't tell you uh at that time.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um yeah, so I but I told my father.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um interesting.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that though, because the irony to me is that the community globally reveres extraordinary talent like yours and authors, and everybody in the arts, if they succeed, uh are seen as extraordinarily successful.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sort of like, how does that play out?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: The irony that it's not held up or revered in the early phase of that person's journey, and yet once they succeed or are seen as you know gaining accolade, that that uh it's the greatest thing you could do, you know, it's sort of ironic.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I I I don't know that people well they do people unfortunately tie success to money.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then they think um, because they've heard of J.K.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: Rowling and Harry Potter, they think, oh, you're like that.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have to tell them no, it's not quite like that.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think because yeah, there is this, there's a sense that it's not needed.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, as as you just pointed out, in in in the COVID year, um, or more than a year, we've seen how much uh is needed and how much people do turn to it.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when I've spoken to um aspiring writers, young writers, um including even poets and you know, um um poets, and I I'm a lover of poetry, so this is not a uh to denigrate poets, but um because poets almost never have the opportunity to uh make a lot of money.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's hard for any person who's not a reader of poetry to think of the JK rolling of poetry because there isn't one.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um Sylvia Plath is probably the most yeah, she probably made a lot of money, but you know, but died young, yeah.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, and and T.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Eliot with cats, but that that didn't benefit him.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, I I said to poets they can that the the outside world, or what the the Russian poet Hossip Mandelstam called the established order, um, can denigrate poets, but when somebody gets married or somebody dies, what does the established order do?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: It turns to the work of the group you're in.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now it might not be your work, but you can't know in advance, and often you can't know in your lifetime whether anybody's going to be turning to your work later.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but the group itself needs to uh get collective comfort and security and and ballast from the fact that uh people turn to literature at at funerals, at times of crisis and uh and at times of joy.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, combination of moments, milestones of life, really.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what I think is so ironic about the, shall we say, somewhat cynical um approach that some people have, like, oh, really, you're doing writing?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, or you're oh, you're in a band, yay.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like as if you're sort of, you know, and I get I get that, but the, you know, it sort of is ironic.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I love about you is that, you know, if you say, well, I'm doing law, they go, that is extraordinary.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: Good on you.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: You are on your trajectory.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that as you've rightly pointed out, that doesn't necessarily take everybody on the journey that they need to go on.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be really, especially with young people and coming back to that as a father, and I know you have two young, young boys, as a as a dad, referencing the great um uh, if you like, inspiration of Harry, what sort of dad do you think you um will be to the old the boys as they get older?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know what a great dad you are now, but they're little and and and they're very lucky because they've got a very, very funny and smart dad.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what what sort of some of the the takeouts do you think you'll apply to your own parenting?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um I'll have a much more uh you know broader musical taste than than my father.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um they're already listening to jazz and blues as well as classical and all sorts of rock, you know.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Kelly.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my my four-year-old will tell you his favorite Iggy pop song.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh look, I I want to encourage them to uh to have a love, and and so far, so good, to have a love for the arts.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um books, uh, you know, they're they're my little one is not reading yet at all, and and his older brother is just learning to read now, but they already are in inverted commas writing their own books about, you know, because they know that's what dad does.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the whole idea of writing a book is something that can be done, as opposed to being something that um, you know, I don't know how it gets done, somebody does it, and it appears in our school, but you know, it can't really like who does that?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so they they have a sense that you know you can start with nothing, and they've seen uh we we we have in our house uh the the idea of two kinds of stories.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: There are the stories that we read, my wife and I read to them, and then there are what they've taken to calling pretend stories.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: And pretend stories are impromptu stories that you know they insist on at bedtime.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they have seen characters from the pretend stories, uh, particularly a couple of Russian bears, um, creep into the catfinkel stories, my my novels for children.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so they get a very real sense that you know something that dad said to us with the lights out as he was putting us to bed could end up in a book that kids that are older than us will talk about.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of the arts are very real to them.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, there's there's music.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have a little keyboard and each of the boys has a guitar, and you know, we we all jam together.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that's very you know tangible for them as well.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then they do a lot of sort of arts and crafts, um, largely, you know, it's my wife's doing because she's better at that than me.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so they're very hands-on in these areas, and it's not that I want them to be artists, heaven forbid, but but uh it's the you know, what we've been talking about, the the psychological strength you can get from the arts, both creating it, and you don't have to do it professionally, uh, but also particularly consuming it.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you get um, how can I put it, inoculated with a love for various arts, it's gonna help you on your journey through life all the way through.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's something that's incredibly healthy, that doesn't often get talked about.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that I I want to be that kind of father at least.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're we're also um, you know, I play football with them and they ride their bikes and sing Stephen Silvani, yeah.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean they haven't sung that song yet, no.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, but they do love Carlton.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but one thing that also just on that note, I mean, I remember you gave a gift to my son at a milestone birthday that um he was young, and it was, I think it was 14 books of some of your favorite books.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you said, now you said to him, now I know you don't get this now because you probably want a Nintendo, but I promised you, and I'll never forget it, I promised you, hold on to these, and even if you read one a year as you get older, and it was one of the most poignant presents, and he still to this day, that was what, eight years ago, he still to this day um, you know, remembers that gift and values that gift, and that is very quintessential L in that you think, and that is about so so that brings me to the notion of legacy, because I think really, in a way, we all, and especially as we get older, there's a sense of what are we giving to our world, to our children, and how are we uh contributing to an ongoing dialogue about what matters?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's very much what I think is important to you from what I glean, and the way that you parent, the way that you so you know, giving that gift to my son.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you can talk to me a little bit about that.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: How much does it matter to you and what do you think yours will be?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I know um I I I run sometimes I think my kids would much rather I could, you know, give them a car or an apartment or you know, overseas trips or something.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, I in in the in terms of my books, I'm hoping that um well they get a sense of who I am and or who I was, you know, after I'm gone.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um and that they get they get a reminder of my values being the values that I hope to to instill in them and you know a certain amount of entertainment.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think frankly, that's that's I I really mean this.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's more important than uh zeros in the bank account.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because the zeros in the bank account, firstly, if you didn't earn them yourself, they can feel hollow.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: They can haunt you, they can make you feel that you know you're not worthy because someone else earned this and you never could.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, they can also be taken away.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: They can be taken away by you know unwise decisions, or they can be taken away by the economy, or they can be taken away by political events, as you know, um as we've seen.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: As we've seen, yeah.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh much better to spend time cultivating the self than the bank account.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we we've we've seen uh I I keep talking about our age, but it's only because I've known you for so long.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um that life isn't a a snapshot, but an ongoing continuous stream of images and circumstances.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: And um people can work very hard and through all sorts of, you know, they can lose everything.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they can they can spend all their time in a law firm, for example, uh, working ungodly hours, not seeing their children, not nurturing that relationship, and then um they get divorced, all the money they hope to earn is is is split, they don't have very much money, and their children don't know them anyway.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, just in case we only live once, you want to try and get it right and you know, ask yourself what's really important.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, it'd be nice to have a nice car or a lovely house, but um is that more important than uh a strong relationship with people that are important to you?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that more important than trying to instill values you believe in into your kids?
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, at the at the risk of sounding widely idealistic.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that uh I don't sort of uh throw my hands up in despair when bills come in that I can't afford immediately, that I would have been able to afford if uh if I was, you know, still a barrister.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: But um maybe, maybe, yeah.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe, yeah.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the other thing.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: There are, you know, there are barristers and solicitors that don't get a lot of work.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and COVID hit too.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: They've been very covet hit.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you just can't uh uh one of the great let you know, the podcast is called What I've Learned.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: One of the great things I've learned is is how little control we really have over our own circumstances.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: You you think, you know, particularly when you're younger, you think, well, I'll do this and I'll do that and I'll get the following outcome.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, fate's just laughing at you.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: So true, Al.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's such a such a poignant reflection.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in light of that, what I would like to mention though is you have recently done a deal with Paramount Television for your book, Maybe the Horse Will Talk, which is an extraordinary achievement.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what have you learnt from past film and television deals and adaptations?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: And how has this informed your recent opportunity?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because it does feed into what legacy will this, you know, where will this take this book?
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know, for example, it's going to be set in America, not in Australia.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to me a little bit about that, how it came to be and where you'd like to see it going.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I had hoped that an Australian producer would be interested, but nobody was.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so when Paramount in the US was interested, you know, obviously I was delighted.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had one of those moments that I'll never have again.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you sort of I I I had my younger son in my arms taking him out of his car seat, dropping him at kindergarten.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: We were in the car park of the kindergarten, and uh there's a little ding in my pocket, it's a text message.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was the president of Paramount, and she said, Call me when you wake up.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: We want to buy the horse.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I thought, that's never gonna happen again.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I immediately um drop my son on the footpath.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, I didn't do that.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I took him into kinda and then I called my wife and told her what had happened.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they want to set it in a US city because they're making it for US television, so that's the the primary market, but they're hoping to, you know, export it internationally.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they want to uh they they were hoping, you know, they uh my experience in film and television is you know not extensive yet.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm hoping to do more of it, but um they said they knew that and and they wanted me to adapt it uh and executive produce it because they wanted what they call a my quirky voice.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you know, I'm trying to infuse all of the spirit of the novel into the TV show.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: The idea is that um I'm I'm thinking at the moment, I hope I'm not talking out of turn if they don't want me to say this, but I think they want it to be 10 episodes, and the the plot of the novel will cover the first season, and then uh they they plan if if it's successful enough, uh, that the characters and the situations would live on into a second season.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but of course, I'm I'm just at you know, because COVID has slowed everything down, I'm working with a uh a wonderful showrunner.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the so for people who don't, um, and I wouldn't have known either, the the term showrunner, um, it's an American term increasingly used here and in the UK to denote, I guess, the senior person who's responsible for not all creative, not only creative decisions, but all those decisions which frankly I just don't have the experience for, and at the moment, not even the desire.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's a there's a there's a a hierarchy of set designers, say, and want to try and get one that is right for this particular show, and I don't know anything about American set designers, so it would be ridiculous of me to you know try and take on that role.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm more interested in the creative side of it, but I'm working with the showrunner, and she's um a fantastic woman of um many years' experience in US TV, and you know, she'll guide me through it all, and she's because she's a writer, she wants to write some of it as well.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I'm working on the pilot now, and you know, like so exciting.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is, and and um there's always you know there's the potential for nothing to happen, which is if um firstly I have to satisfy Paramount, and then Paramount has to satisfy uh I'm I'm assuming there's a number of ways it can go.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: It can go to um streaming, streaming service or to premium cable like HBO.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if none of those outlets want it, then I guess nothing will happen.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: But then if they do want it, will they want to shoot the pilot first and then have me write the rest of the season?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, or will they want me to write the rest of the season first?
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: All these things, it's not simply that I don't know, Paramount doesn't know because it it can go in different ways.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's no um there's no law that says, oh, they'll take the pilot and then they'll shoot the pilot and buy the rest, or so we'll we'll wait and see.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, look, it's terribly exciting.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do you trust sorry?
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna ask you, how do you trust others with your baby?
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your, you know, is this because I know in the past you've done that on many occasions, um, both in film and television.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think creative control is very important to you, and rightly so, because it's your your uh piece of art.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you relate to it?
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: You have to um, to a certain extent, you have to be prepared to lose some creative control.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: I never like it, but you have to be prepared because it's just the the brutal economics of the situation.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: No one is going to uh give me ultimate control, um complete control.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um what you really want to to the best extent possible is to get people to work with that you can respect and and particularly that get what you're trying to do.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the beauty of um the showrunner I'm working with now is she completely gets it.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so what happened was I was in the the unusual position of interviewing.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: For the position of my boss.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: So she she um kind of outranks me in the you know the the power hierarchy.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I would get uh scripts paramount.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I said that I would like to work with a woman uh for lots of reasons, um uh including the you know a lot of the the themes and subject matter of maybe the horse will talk.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I said, so if it's going to be um if the showrunner you have in mind has been is an experienced writer, television writer, um they were going to send me sample scripts of each of the women, the women writers, that they paramount wanted to work with.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they sent me scripts, and then if I liked that the script sufficiently, they'd arrange a uh a video uh you know, like a date.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like a writer's date, yeah.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, me and the potential show runner.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if that went well enough, I would say to Paramount, um, she's the one, she's the one I want to work with.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I found someone who is terrific and she really gets it.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she's funny and she's smart and she has experience, she can totally walk me through the minefield that is American television.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which I'm sure, yeah, it's quite a minefield.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and you want to hold on to your integrity.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know what you're like.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you're wanting to hold on to your mission and your vision.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's good if you've got somebody to hold your hand on that because it allows you the freedom to have the the uh creative control, but also focus on your content.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, you just want to feel comfortable with the person that you're, you know, the way it was explained to me is that your relationship with the showrunner is the closest thing you're gonna have in your professional life to a marriage.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was about to say it's like a marriage.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is, it really is.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we speak all the time, we've we've email today, we you know, we text, and uh uh, you know, it's great.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really enjoying it.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we we're it's very early days yet, but so far so good.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd love to thank you for coming on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for your stories, for your storytelling, for the gems that you've given us.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to see what's up ahead and look forward to seeing hopefully a lot more of your stories because you really are contributing so much to the uh to the psyche, to the literary psyche that we all love to uh relish.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and I can't wait to see what happens with this television series, too.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we'll get to see it.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Deb.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's an absolute pleasure.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: Really, really was.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Al.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly with new episodes released every Tuesday.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: Love dear.