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The Dems After Tuesday’s Primaries, plus Elmore Leonard’s Bad Guys / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

0:08
[SPEAKER_04]: From the nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense.
0:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm John Weiner.
0:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Later in the show, a segment from the archives, Elmore Leonard, who died in 2013 at age 87, was unpretentious about his massive accomplishments, 45 novels, more than a dozen, turned into movies, and a reputation as one of the great writers of dialogue.
0:31
[SPEAKER_04]: We spoke with him in 2000 about where he got his bad guys and about his movies, get shorty, Jackie Brown, and out of sight.
0:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But first, our analysis of Tuesday's primaries with John Nichols.
0:45
[SPEAKER_04]: That's coming up in a minute.
0:48
[SPEAKER_04]: For today's political update, we turn to John Nichols, of course he's executive editor of the nation.
0:54
[SPEAKER_05]: John, welcome back.
0:55
[SPEAKER_02]: John, it's an honor to be with you.
0:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, the big primary this week, of course, was the California governor's race.
1:01
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the jungle primary where two Republicans and eight Democrats all competed for the top two slots who go to the November final.
1:10
[SPEAKER_04]: California's vote count is notoriously slow.
1:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We are speaking Wednesday at midday.
1:16
[SPEAKER_04]: The count as of this morning is 58% in and the governor's race is currently
1:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Republican Steve Hilton is at 28% establishment democratic candidate Zavir Bacera 25 taking the lead among Dems, Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist supported by progressives.
1:43
[SPEAKER_04]: at 20%, so it looks like it will be stir, it will be out, and Bacera seems likely to be the next governor of a blue state.
1:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Gavin Newsom has been the California governor who has led the national resistance to Trump, especially on Jerry Mandarin.
2:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that something that we are
2:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the reason this was such a competitive race at the end is because a lot of people work confident of that.
2:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I've covered Bessera for a long time and I've seen him do some really good things along the way.
2:26
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a mixed bag politically.
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's fair to say he's been around politics for an incredibly long time.
2:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, let me just say he was elected to Congress in the old old days from Los Angeles
2:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
2:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he, you know, he's, he's run some winning races, some not winning races along the way, but I think his history, you know, has been one of being a pretty mainstream Democrat with some some reasonably progressive tendencies, but also not a far brand.
3:01
[SPEAKER_02]: not somebody who's thought of as, you know, doing this sort of thing that news of did, right, which is just, you know, kind of take over social media, appear on every TV show, et cetera.
3:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think of Mr. Moore as a managerial, Democrat, and one who frankly has a lot more ties to corporate interests and to business interests.
3:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I want to slow us down though a little bit here, John.
3:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Please, because I am not a Californian as you are.
3:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So, of course, defer to you if I get anything wrong here, but I am something of an aficionado of the long California count.
3:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have watched it do amazing things in American politics.
3:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It's something that California probably should figure out at some point how to get the count done say within a week.
3:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not the case.
3:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes these counts go on for weeks, ballots that have arrived late are still, you know, added in.
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, as long as they arrive in the prescribed time period, they are added into the count and that can take quite a long time.
4:17
[SPEAKER_02]: was close on election night, and then because of the California account expanded into, in the case of Joe Biden in 2020, something of a landslide.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, in the case of of 2016 it was actually Hillary Clinton got more votes in the case of 2024 it was a much closer race.
4:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do I say all this?
4:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I would caution against assuming that everything is settled in the calendar.
4:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Excellent point.
4:55
[SPEAKER_02]: This is why they say too close to call.
4:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's exactly why.
4:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this is where you get into the minutiae of it all.
5:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And we don't have to do all that today, but let's just explain this subtlety.
5:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Generally, in the long California count, the pattern has been that liberal Democrats often do better once everything's counted, because a lot of their supporters for mobilizing people, they're trying to get a turnout grassroots turnout.
5:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of their supporters vote late.
5:28
[SPEAKER_04]: But let's put it this way.
5:31
[SPEAKER_04]: The more progressive voters seem to wait to the deadline before they put their ballots in the mail.
5:37
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a very good way to say it.
5:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So by that model, Stire should tick upward.
5:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
5:43
[SPEAKER_02]: He's down, you know, decent number of votes here.
5:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's, you know, be honest about it.
5:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would imagine that he ticks rather steadily upward.
5:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna also suggest that Hilton ticks downward.
5:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
5:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we could end up,
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: in a week or so.
6:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see.
6:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not guaranteeing we could end up in a week or so with a situation where styrofoce and Hilton are all in a very narrow zone.
6:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And at that point I'd be glad to come on again and we can discuss what happened.
6:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, words words to the wise.
6:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not over yet given the long California account.
6:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, the other big Grayson California this week was for LA mayor.
6:31
[SPEAKER_04]: They've declared Karen Bass incumbent the winner.
6:35
[SPEAKER_04]: She will have to go into a runoff in November with the Republican Spencer Pratt.
6:42
[SPEAKER_04]: blue city so she's she's pretty much assured of getting another term she faced an electorate preoccupied with the in part blamed her for the fire departments in adequate response to those devastating fires in the palicades and also the persistence of
7:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Homelessness, to me, Karen Bass has not been appreciated enough by Los Angeles voters for the, for the, for the, for the important brave leading role she played in resisting Trump, you may remember L.A. was the first city that Trump targeted for an ice on slot, because L.A. has more immigrants than any place else, and she's set an example for other mayors of how to stand up to Trump, and that seems to me to be one of the most important things.
7:28
[SPEAKER_02]: anybody can do in America, but so she is going to be, well, she's in a race and let me, you know, a put on my nation hat and remind folks that a couple months ago we did a cover, it's a whole issue on LA because of its incredible resistance and and and there are many people that are been a part of that, many
7:48
[SPEAKER_02]: many forces that were engaged.
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And let me also do one last count.
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So I hate to be the long count guru here, but LA also faces a long count.
8:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And it'll be interesting to see kind of what sort of numbers you get.
8:05
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a third candidate in that race who's run as very, as a very progressive contender.
8:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you are nithia ramen, do you have the same member?
8:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so let's see where it all shakes out and when you get there, my sense is that yes, you're right.
8:23
[SPEAKER_02]: LA is probably going to have a democratic mayor and it's probably going to be bass.
8:28
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, I just do the long count counsel because there's a lot more votes to be
8:41
[SPEAKER_04]: elsewhere there's more to the United States than California the national picture here is seems pretty likely Democrats will win control of the house in the real battle it's going to be over control of the Senate where the Democrats
8:56
[SPEAKER_04]: need at least four seats, five would be a lot better than four.
9:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Iowa has emerged as one possibility for Democrats to gain a seat that they can take away from Republicans in the Senate because Republican-Joney Ernst decided not to run for reelection.
9:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Their primary was Tuesday.
9:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me just remind us that
9:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I would not long ago was a swing state, it went for Obama twice, but in recent election cycles it's become solid red voted for Trump all three times, Trump won two years ago by 13 points.
9:33
[SPEAKER_04]: There's been Republican governors of Iowa for the last 15 years right now all six of the state's congressional representatives are Republicans.
9:43
[SPEAKER_04]: This year seems to be the time that all that could come to an end.
9:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Iowa voters have been suffering because of Trump's economic policies.
9:52
[SPEAKER_04]: The winner of the Democratic primary, the Democratic primary for the Senate is Josh Turek.
9:58
[SPEAKER_04]: He's kind of an amazing guy.
10:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Why don't you tell us about Josh Turek?
10:02
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a remarkable figure.
10:03
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, probably the Senate candidate in the whole country, most worthy of a profile or maybe even a made for TV movie.
10:15
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a parlor Olympic.
10:17
[SPEAKER_02]: gold medalist, he is a remarkable athlete who has really shown incredible courage and incredible strength for many, many years in his personal life, but he is also a very capable politician.
10:33
[SPEAKER_02]: He got into a state-centered race that wasn't easy and he wanted through, you know,
10:40
[SPEAKER_02]: just sheer grit going to doors, doing all the things that are necessary.
10:44
[SPEAKER_02]: He's been a very active member of the Iowa legislature, and at a point when Jonny Ernst, the incumbent senator, got herself into a lot of trouble by saying some things that were not popular with islands and eventually decided not to run for reelection.
11:02
[SPEAKER_02]: He stepped up early as an alternative.
11:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is a guy who has shown a lot of
11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: and a lot of, you know, courage, which you don't always see in Democrats.
11:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my sense is that he is going to be a remarkable candidate for this seat.
11:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to get a lot of attention and while we'll talk about other states where the Senate race is really important, I think that Iowa could easily emerge this year because of Joshua.
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: as the state that ultimately Democrats see as the one, not just getting him even in the Senate, but potentially putting them over the top so that they have a majority.
11:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And it won't be an easy race.
11:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You write that Iowa has become more red in recent years.
11:51
[SPEAKER_02]: However, the thing to understand about it is that even in these recent years that it's become more Republican,
11:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Democrats have still held their own in many instances.
12:02
[SPEAKER_02]: They've won and lost congressional seats.
12:05
[SPEAKER_02]: They had a Senate seat till not that long ago.
12:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And they currently have one statewide elected official.
12:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That's Rob Sand, who is now the Democratic nominee for governor.
12:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is a guy who won even when the Republicans were doing well.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: That's important because now that he's the Gubernatorial candidate, he's got a lot of skills for running an Iowa Islands know him.
12:32
[SPEAKER_02]: He also is a remarkably talented kind of coalition builder for lack of a better term.
12:43
[SPEAKER_02]: From the start of his campaign, he's run on a number of very popular post issues.
12:49
[SPEAKER_02]: But, at the same time, he has reached out to Republicans throughout this process and that has turned out to be a genius move because the Republicans have come out of their primary very, very divided.
13:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the Republican candidate who will be running against Rob Sam for governor of Iowa.
13:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The Trump back candidate, Randy Fiendstra, lost to an even further right guy who I don't know anything about Zach Lan, how did this happen?
13:25
[SPEAKER_02]: was that when it had, he had so many, I mean, he was not a, he had an up money to run a Monto Series campaign.
13:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But certainly, if Instra was the candidate that Trump and everybody had settled on to be their nominee, here's the subtleties.
13:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Iowa Republican politics has always been a knock-down dragout battle between, you know, kind of mainstream conservatives.
13:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Really, people that we would think of as very, very conservative, and then a much more extreme right.
13:57
[SPEAKER_02]: that often strays outside the boundaries of even Republican Party, and they have been viable over the years.
14:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not, you know, they're real.
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the first time that you've seen a primary winner come from outside the mainstream of the Republican Party.
14:14
[SPEAKER_02]: This candidate who pulled it off, though, is interesting because he's Maha.
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: make America healthy again and very close to the kind of Robert F. Kennedy message.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: He had a lot of support from that community as well as from, you know, a lot of religious right social right wing groupings.
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And he ran a remarkable campaign, John, because his campaign wasn't just
14:47
[SPEAKER_02]: is more conservative or something like that.
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: He actually had a critique of corporate agriculture and of pesticides and things like that, which, in Iowa's controversial, but it's also fascinating because he sort of mixed up a lot of the, he undid a lot of the boundaries of politics.
15:09
[SPEAKER_02]: To be honest, I think in some ways, he might be,
15:13
[SPEAKER_02]: a very strong candidate in the fall because he, like we're outside, has a message that is not just down a narrow lane.
15:22
[SPEAKER_02]: However, some of his stands are so extreme and that they're going to unsuttle some of the mainstream Republicans.
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: then beneath all this is a whole bunch of personality fights, people who don't like each other, and it's going to be a real challenge to unite through a public and party going into November.
15:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So you end up in a situation, no guarantees, but you end up with a situation where it is within the realm of possibility that Iowa could elect a democratic governor, a democratic senator,
15:57
[SPEAKER_02]: at least two democratic members of the House of Representatives, substantial gains in the legislature, and suddenly this state, which, you know, we should remember voted for Barack Obama, could be very much back into the purple lane of American politics, and even potentially start to be talked about as a competitive state for president in 2028.
16:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to talk just for a minute about those house candidates in Iowa because that's one of the most remarkable things going on now there's two or maybe three Republican seats that the Democrats looks like they have a very good chance of flipping an Iowa three seats flipped in one state
16:39
[SPEAKER_04]: the candidate in Iowa third district, the Moines of the South and Central Iowa.
16:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Sarah Throne Garriott described herself as, she says, I'm a Lutheran minister who defeats Republican men.
16:52
[SPEAKER_04]: She's defeated three different Republican men in her campaigns for the state legislature.
16:59
[SPEAKER_04]: In around Iowa City and Davenport, Iowa 1 and Christine Bohannon, she grew up in a mobile home, and now she's a law professor at the University of Iowa.
17:09
[SPEAKER_04]: She lost that race two years ago, I think by 800 votes, something like that, looks like a winter this time, and in Iowa 2, that's Cedar Rapids and Dubuque.
17:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Lindsey James is a Presbyterian pastor who served in the Iowa House for several times and is a very appealing candidate.
17:30
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you think of a three women running in those districts in Iowa?
17:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they could win and I think that's a really
17:40
[SPEAKER_02]: big deal because Iowa, as I said, it's elected Democrats or Congress in recent years.
17:46
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not some radical concept.
17:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not beyond what can happen there.
17:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And the key is to have good candidates in a good year, right?
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and these candidates who were running in these districts are not folks who just said, oh, I think I've been around for Congress.
18:01
[SPEAKER_02]: These are folks who've been at it in Iowa for a while.
18:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They're no one in their districts as you point out.
18:06
[SPEAKER_02]: One of them, almost one the last time, they have run ahead of their own ticket.
18:13
[SPEAKER_02]: repeatedly, or at least you know those who've been on the ballot, and so I think there's a real chance that you're going to see some wins here.
18:21
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing to put in the mix, and I know, you know, this is not surprising as regards Iowa, but it's really important to understand that this farm,
18:35
[SPEAKER_02]: policy of the Trump administration built around tariffs, and frankly, with a disregard for rural hospitals and for a lot of other concerns of rural America has the potential to really shift a lot of the voting in areas where Trump did very, very well, and Republicans have done very well in recent years.
18:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And if the Democrats have candidates who can
18:58
[SPEAKER_02]: effectively reach out to rural areas in Iowa.
19:02
[SPEAKER_02]: They may establish a model that isn't just relevant to that state, but there's relevant to the whole country.
19:08
[SPEAKER_04]: This one of the state had a primary yesterday with a fascinating case of a Democrat flipping a Republican seat.
19:17
[SPEAKER_04]: New Jersey 7, the Democratic candidate Rebecca Bennett, is will be running against Republican Tom Keane.
19:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Tell us why she has a chance of beating Tom Keane.
19:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's a super competitive district, right?
19:31
[SPEAKER_02]: New Jersey is trending Democratic up and down the ballot is last year's good material election showed where you had a huge win there for the Democrat.
19:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And so right off the bat, it was competitive.
19:45
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing is that Congressman King has been kind of off radar.
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: for months, and is this a big story in New Jersey?
19:55
[SPEAKER_02]: He not only doesn't do town meetings, and Republicans don't do town meetings, but he's generally just been not seen.
20:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are reports assumptions about whether he's got a personal challenge or whatever.
20:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And that certainly you hope he's doing okay.
20:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But
20:14
[SPEAKER_02]: At this point, I think it has become such an issue that there is a very real possibility that voters in that district will simply say, you know, maybe we even appreciated our congressman in the past, our Republican congressman, but we'd like somebody who's active and engaged and showing up for town meetings and president in the district and things of that nature.
20:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The one final thing is that the incumbent, the Republican incumbent,
20:40
[SPEAKER_02]: he struck a very moderate Republican.
20:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was one of the reasons that he did well even when other Republicans didn't.
20:48
[SPEAKER_02]: The Trump era has done tremendous damage to moderate Republicans because they've essentially been forced to go along with the Trump agenda.
20:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The Trump agenda is very unpopular in New Jersey.
21:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think you have a real chance for a flip there, and I might note, John, we have now talked about a lot of flipped congressional seats.
21:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very different states.
21:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
21:11
[SPEAKER_04]: One last thing I want to talk about was not an election this week, but a main that Senate race in Maine Democrats cannot take control of the Senate without defeating Susan Collins in Maine.
21:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Main is the only blue state with a, the only state that voted for Kamala Harris that has a Republican incumbent.
21:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And our candidate in Maine for the, is Democrat Graham Platner, he's this anti establishment working class oyster farmer, progressives never run for anything.
21:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It never run for anything before.
21:48
[SPEAKER_04]: It's been in and out of various kinds of trouble during the campaign and this week there was a new burst of trouble for Graham Platten.
21:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal revealed what they described as quote, sexually explicit texts with several women close, quote, who weren't his wife.
22:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of our friends are saying, well, this is disqualifying, this is another case, they're the Democrats who are going to have to turn against this candidate.
22:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think that's right.
22:15
[SPEAKER_04]: because there's no hint that any of the women who receive these texts said they felt threatened or abused or taken advantage of or victimized.
22:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And if there's no victims here, if nobody is complaining about receiving these emails, his wife has come out as a strong supporter of his campaign despite the discovery of these texts.
22:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think he's still okay.
22:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he can still win.
22:40
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you think?
22:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been up to me, I've seen Graham Platner campaigning along with Troy Jackson who's running a very populous campaign for governor up there and I've seen him in different settings and I'll pick up the up there again this weekend looking at the campaign up there.
23:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I can tell you is that whatever you think about Graham Platter, he has brought something to this race that may be more powerful than traditional models for what happens in politics.
23:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is that he has meticulously gone to pretty much every town in Maine.
23:24
[SPEAKER_02]: and held evening long, uh, town hall meetings, which are packed.
23:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes have, you know, very measurable portions, proportions of the number of people in the whole town, at the meeting.
23:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're wide open.
23:38
[SPEAKER_02]: He speaks.
23:39
[SPEAKER_02]: He takes questions.
23:40
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a back and forth questions about his past have come up and, you know, he's he's addressed them.
23:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my sense is with
23:52
[SPEAKER_02]: a relationship with the voters that goes beyond what the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal may report or what we may be discussing right now.
24:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes beyond folks from outside main.
24:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know.
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: how, you know, I don't know what will come or how complex things will get.
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Susan Collins is desperate to retain her seat.
24:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I am certain she and her supporters will run a brutal campaign.
24:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I have no doubt of that.
24:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also have no doubt that they wouldn't run a brutal campaign against any opponent.
24:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my sense is that Platner will be
24:33
[SPEAKER_02]: come easily through next Tuesday's primary in Maine and be the nominee.
24:39
[SPEAKER_02]: He now has Chuck Schumer, who was not a fan for quite a long time, saying that he's supportive of him.
24:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And the polling, although it's early to say, the polling seems to suggest that Platinum remains
24:54
[SPEAKER_02]: something of a favorite with a lot of main voters.
24:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think we're going to hear a lot from main throughout this year.
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be a premier race.
25:07
[SPEAKER_02]: There's going to be an awfully lot of attention to it.
25:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But my sense is that if Platner keeps doing what he's doing, which is literally going out and talking to main voters, in person, a lot.
25:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, that we're going to go less than about what's more powerful, TV or face to face.
25:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And Maine is a small enough state where face to face and real communication can still, you know, perhaps make the difference.
25:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think Platinum is very much still in the race.
25:39
[SPEAKER_04]: John Nichols, reading it, themation.com, John, thanks for talking with us today.
25:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, John.
25:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It is an honor to be with you.
25:59
[SPEAKER_05]: and now a segment from the archives.
26:02
[SPEAKER_05]: Elmore Leonard has been described by the New York Times as our greatest living writer of crime fiction.
26:07
[SPEAKER_05]: He spent a couple of decades writing Westerns and thrillers before critics took notice of him in the 1980s.
26:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Today he's known for his tight prose, perfect dialogue, and intriguing characters.
26:19
[SPEAKER_05]: Three of his recent books have been made into movies.
26:22
[SPEAKER_05]: His newest novel has just been published.
26:24
[SPEAKER_05]: It's titled, Pagan Babies, Elmore Leonard.
26:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Welcome to the program.
26:28
[SPEAKER_05]: John, thank you.
26:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Pagan Babies opens in Rwanda in the wake of the genocide that took place there a couple of years ago.
26:36
[SPEAKER_05]: The story of Rwanda is a horrible one, but it's not very well-known.
26:41
[SPEAKER_05]: How did you get interested in it?
26:43
[SPEAKER_05]: And how did you decide to place your central character there?
26:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Originally, I was going to tell a story about a missionary Catholic priest in Africa who decides after about 25 years that he really doesn't have a vocation and he should get out and it comes home and he finds the world different than it had been when he went in.
27:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I began reading Rwanda principally,
27:11
[SPEAKER_03]: of Philip Greywitch's book.
27:13
[SPEAKER_03]: We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, and that hooked me on Rwanda.
27:19
[SPEAKER_03]: That this was a place where if I could drop my character into the midst of that of this genocide that was going on when upwards of 800,000 people were murdered.
27:31
[SPEAKER_03]: by their neighbors, by friends, and I decided to use Rwanda and I found a news photographer there who through my researcher, my researcher would email him once he agreed to take pictures
27:54
[SPEAKER_03]: He would tell him the photographer exactly what we needed and then we would get the close shots that of village life and what they ate and what they wore and what they drank banana beer, for example, of figuring into the story itself.
28:11
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, this is a gutsy move on your part.
28:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Your readers basically enjoy the locales of Detroit and Florida.
28:21
[SPEAKER_05]: They're not used to finding, let's say, genocide in your stories.
28:25
[SPEAKER_05]: How did you decide to take this step?
28:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I don't want them to become complacent, but really, when I had a book, I and the only one I have to please.
28:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the beauty of writing a book as opposed to a screenplay.
28:42
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I just wanted to use Rwanda, and I wanted to use for the woman in the store, I wanted to use an X-Con stand-up comic.
28:54
[SPEAKER_03]: How does that work?
28:55
[SPEAKER_03]: The priest, the orizia priest, character, and the stand-up comic come together and get along beautifully.
29:04
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, the Rwanda section seemed to me to be a step into a Graham Green territory, which is also a new new terrain for you.
29:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Did this occur to you?
29:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it did.
29:15
[SPEAKER_03]: It did occur to me because I loved Graham Green and I was possibly influenced by him at least to a certain extent.
29:24
[SPEAKER_03]: The idea of characters who were Catholic and that their religion meant something to them and figured into the plot.
29:31
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, pagan babies features father Terry Dunn and orthodox priest who hears confessions but for some reason doesn't celebrate mass.
29:45
[SPEAKER_05]: As you mentioned, there's Debbie Doe, the ex-con who's golden life is to be a comic and there's this unlikely assassin called mutt.
29:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Where do you get these characters?
29:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, they present themselves, I suppose.
30:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But I needed a character, and I didn't think of a lot until I got there.
30:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And to that particular part of the book, where I needed the fellow who's running a restaurant needs a bodyguard.
30:19
[SPEAKER_03]: At least, his silent partner is the mob tells him he needs this bodyguard.
30:24
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, he could be a very vicious guy with a record of real cold-hearted killer.
30:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Or he could be a Hick.
30:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Or he could be anything, you know, let's see what's fun.
30:37
[SPEAKER_03]: If he's too vicious, is he entertaining or is he just bad?
30:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't, I never see my bad guys as simply bad.
30:47
[SPEAKER_03]: They're first, they're human.
30:48
[SPEAKER_03]: First, they want pretty much the same thing that you and I want.
30:53
[SPEAKER_03]: They want to be happy.
30:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, it sounds funny, but, you know, they get up in the morning and they get dressed and they wonder what they're going to wear when they pull a job and just like anyone else.
31:07
[SPEAKER_05]: Tell us about the title, Pagan Babies, what does it mean?
31:11
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a reference to ways that money was raised for the missions back when I was in grade school and since then too, where there's a can or someone comes around through the classroom with a can, it's just help save the pagan babies.
31:30
[SPEAKER_03]: This was in Catholic school, of course, in Catholic schools, I don't think there are any
31:41
[SPEAKER_05]: All of your books feature guys who are talkers.
31:46
[SPEAKER_05]: Your dialogue is famous for being lively and funny and revealing.
31:53
[SPEAKER_05]: Are you a talker or do you envy your characters?
31:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I talk through them, of course.
31:59
[SPEAKER_03]: They have to talk or they're out.
32:02
[SPEAKER_03]: They have to talk sort of in auditions in early scenes or else they're they're given less to do or they're thrown out all together or they're shot.
32:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And do you do research to develop your dialogue or do you know all this dialogue already well I don't go out and and sit and listen to people I don't do that I don't you ever do that no I don't think I did it's just that I've I've been
32:34
[SPEAKER_03]: involved with all kinds of people.
32:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I was an enlisted man in the Navy for two and a half years.
32:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I've worked construction and I've just been in maybe I do listen more than the average person.
32:49
[SPEAKER_05]: So do you use dialogue from your own life conversations in your books?
32:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I suppose.
32:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I begin with a type of person.
33:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And then as I get to know that person, he becomes, he takes on a personality, he becomes real to me, I know him better than I know, say most of my friends, and yet I don't know everything about him, but I like to kind of guy as a lead who is sort of on the fence.
33:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he's done time and he comes out and you think, well, he's going to go straight now, but you don't know, you're never sure.
33:30
[SPEAKER_05]: part of your writing style and dealing with this dialogue is that you don't describe how they sound.
33:38
[SPEAKER_05]: There's no adverbs in your in your books.
33:40
[SPEAKER_05]: There's just the words.
33:42
[SPEAKER_05]: You seem confident that
33:45
[SPEAKER_05]: the words are enough.
33:49
[SPEAKER_03]: My feeling is that if I have described the character well enough, if I have presented the character accurately enough, the adverbs are unnecessary.
34:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And I only use the
34:07
[SPEAKER_03]: said.
34:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Another rule is I don't believe you should ever use a semicolon in dialogue.
34:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Where'd you get this rule?
34:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I made that up.
34:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I make up all my rules.
34:20
[SPEAKER_03]: One of them because I don't think because the semicolon may look maybe grammatically correct, but it doesn't look right.
34:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't speak with semicolons.
34:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, one is another one is a never.
34:33
[SPEAKER_03]: begin a book with weather.
34:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And one, there was one that was in the US.
34:39
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a dark and stormy night.
34:41
[SPEAKER_03]: That would be an extreme example.
34:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And one that was in USA today, crossword puzzle last week.
34:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I couldn't believe it when I was doing the puzzle and I came across it and it said start and I had no idea what it was going to be.
35:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like 15 across and it was one of those that
35:04
[SPEAKER_03]: went down through the puzzle itself.
35:07
[SPEAKER_03]: A fan and a fan were with some of the downs I got to I try to so then I knew what the quote was but it's still not word for word because I've said it different ways and what it was I try to leave out those parts of people skip.
35:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazing.
35:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that's pretty obscure.
35:27
[SPEAKER_05]: That is pretty good.
35:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Hey if you didn't get it.
35:31
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't feel so bad.
35:31
[SPEAKER_05]: No, no.
35:34
[SPEAKER_05]: Elmore Leonard, in addition to your character, so we're, you know, defined by their dialogue, you also have these intricate and fascinating plots.
35:44
[SPEAKER_05]: Where do you get your criminal ideas?
35:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It's funny you should ask because I've heard from convicts who say we'd like to know a little bit more about you, how you seem to understand the criminal mentality, the, have you, what they want to know is if I've done time and I was talking to a guy and tell you right at the film festival he said it's amazing he said I did a little time.
36:07
[SPEAKER_03]: three years.
36:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And there were I talked to guys who I was swear could have been in your book.
36:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, what were you, what was the three years for?
36:17
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, all possession of marijuana.
36:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I said three years, how much did you have?
36:21
[SPEAKER_03]: He said, all 400 pounds.
36:25
[SPEAKER_03]: He couldn't, he couldn't convince the court that it was for personally, you would say.
36:31
[SPEAKER_05]: Now that's a kind of character to have,
36:34
[SPEAKER_05]: You started your fiction career writing Westerns and you witnessed pretty much the end of the Western as a central part of our popular culture.
36:44
[SPEAKER_05]: What happened?
36:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Television.
36:46
[SPEAKER_03]: More than 30 Westerns on prime time during the week by the end of the fittest.
36:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had chosen Westerns as the genre because it was so it was
36:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic.
36:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean there were probably 25 magazines you could aim at.
37:04
[SPEAKER_03]: From the better slick magazines down through all a bunch of pops.
37:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I thought this is a place to learn to write.
37:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So I did some research on the westerns and on Arizona in the 1880s and started selling them right away.
37:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And what was involved in your research for Westerns?
37:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Apache's and Cavalry.
37:26
[SPEAKER_03]: They were very big in the 50s.
37:28
[SPEAKER_03]: She wore a yellow ribbon for the Apache.
37:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Those were John Ford movies.
37:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you live in the West?
37:34
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no.
37:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Western landscape?
37:36
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I subscribed to Arizona Highway.
37:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Aha.
37:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Magazine.
37:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was all there.
37:42
[SPEAKER_05]: I think we need to talk about the movies a little bit.
37:44
[SPEAKER_05]: They recently, you've had three fantastic movies made from your books, Get Shorty in 1995, which I read made $200 million.
37:54
[SPEAKER_05]: Congratulations.
37:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, did.
37:57
[SPEAKER_05]: Jackie Brown in 97 and out of sight in 1998, what was your role in those movies?
38:05
[SPEAKER_05]: Did you write the screenplays?
38:06
[SPEAKER_05]: Did you work on the screenplays?
38:07
[SPEAKER_05]: No.
38:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I would ask me, who do you see?
38:11
[SPEAKER_03]: In particular I would name an actress say they would say oh, that's entry now it'd be in there See, but Scott Frank who wrote get shorty He and I became friends on the set.
38:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I was there four days watching him shoot so that then when he wrote
38:29
[SPEAKER_03]: got into writing out of sight he would call me up every once in a while and say what do you think of this changes that he wanted to make thing was the ending where it's all focused on George Clooney with the with the upbeat possibility that he might escape again and we disagreed on that and i said it's her book
38:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean it's her story and Scott said it's her book but it's his movie.
38:57
[SPEAKER_03]: In one was that because he sells more tickets than Jennifer Lopez and he was right about the Albert Brooks.
39:05
[SPEAKER_03]: He was actually he was right in both instances so this is not my business writing screen place.
39:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I've written probably a dozen.
39:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Some have been made maybe half have been made but it was never a satisfying experience
39:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And of course you're an employee, and you would get comments from studio execs, I suppose.
39:28
[SPEAKER_03]: You would be told what to do.
39:32
[SPEAKER_03]: The studio execs crossing out my dialogue and putting in their dialogue.
39:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And you didn't like this?
39:41
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I don't think that's much fun, because the movies were terrible.
39:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Of course, when studio execs give you comments, does it ever happen that these are things you've actually thought of before?
39:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, sure, the obvious things, especially when actors add lib.
40:02
[SPEAKER_03]: They add lib all the cliches you threw out immediately when you were writing the screenplay.
40:07
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's talk about Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed, adapted from Rumpunch.
40:16
[SPEAKER_05]: Quentin Tarantino, of course, every kid in film school wants to be Quentin Tarantino.
40:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you know why he was interested in Rumpunch as opposed for other novels you'd written at that point?
40:29
[SPEAKER_03]: When he was a kid, while he when he was a teenager, he stole a book of mine from a bookstore, a switch, and three other characters show up again in Rumpunch, just at which came out just at the time of reservoir dogs, and he wanted to buy it, but he didn't have backing, he didn't have money.
40:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And my agents said, we'll save it for you.
40:53
[SPEAKER_03]: When you get ready, you can have it.
40:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, after a rum punch, he was ready.
41:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And we offered him five different titles, the ones that were available, and Eramax option four of them for him.
41:08
[SPEAKER_05]: I thought Jackie Brown was, in some ways, the truest to your work because so much of the film time is devoted to sketching the characters rather than the plot.
41:21
[SPEAKER_05]: Am I right about this?
41:23
[SPEAKER_03]: You are indeed the first half of the movie is development of the characters in situations until finally then the plot goes the action of the plot gets going and then right to the end.
41:38
[SPEAKER_05]: And the other thing in Jackie Brown is that the Leeds Robert Forster and Panther are really over the hill by Hollywood standards, but they're your kind of people and Quentin made something out of that, that they are older, but it worked.
41:55
[SPEAKER_03]: He said he was afraid.
41:58
[SPEAKER_03]: just before he went into production he said I was afraid to call you excuse me for the last year because I said because what you changed in the title and you started a black woman in the lead and he says yeah and I said well I love him great or go to work you know
42:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And you also have the Maleficent Samuel L. Jackson.
42:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Samuel Jackson.
42:19
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he was perfect for the park.
42:22
[SPEAKER_05]: We have a little bit of Samuel L. Jackson dialogue here from a scene from Jackie Brown.
42:28
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's listen just for a minute.
42:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's Beauma.
42:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's Beauma?
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I am Chloe.
42:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to let go.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: He put itself in a position where he was going to have to do 10 years in prison.
42:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what he did.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: If you know Beaumont, you know, I ain't no guy down where he can do 10 years.
42:56
[SPEAKER_01]: If you know that, and you know Beaumont's going to do anything Beaumont can to keep from doing them 10 years, including telling the federal government, any and every motherf***ing thing about my black ass.
43:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that my friend.
43:11
[SPEAKER_01]: is a clear-cut case, a him, a me, and you best believe, it ain't gonna be me.
43:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Samuel L. Jackson from Jackie Brown, uh, Elmore Leonard, how does that sound to you today?
43:25
[SPEAKER_05]: It sounds like it's right out of the book.
43:27
[SPEAKER_05]: I love it.
43:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Pretty, pretty.
43:29
[SPEAKER_03]: He hits the right words, you know, he's an actor.
43:33
[SPEAKER_05]: You are last question, you are 75 years old, you are working at peak form, what do you are secret?
43:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I remember a lefty Gomez said his secret was clean living in a fast-out field.
43:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, Elmore Leonard, thanks so much for talking to us today.
43:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks, John.
43:52
[SPEAKER_04]: We recorded that in October 2000, Elmore Leonard died in 2013.
44:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Start making sense.
44:08
[SPEAKER_04]: A podcast from the nation magazine is recorded at our upstairs studio in Los Angeles.
44:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer.
44:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Richie the Ambrose is executive producer, Boskarsun Kara is president of the nation, Katrina Van Nouvelle is editor and publisher of the nation.
44:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Our theme music is Barcelona Afrobeat, License by Creative Commons.
44:34
[SPEAKER_04]: You can find out more about start making sense at thenation.com and subscribe to start making sense on ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
44:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm John Weiner, thanks for listening.