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KEITH: Jerry Stahl, he's the author
of the memoir "Permanent Midnight," which
was made into a movie starring Ben Stiller,
and "Perv-- A Love Story," both of which
were "Los Angeles Times" best sellers, as well
as acclaimed novels "Painkillers,"
"Plainclothes naked."
He's also written extensively for film and television.
He recently wrote the screenplay for the HBO
film "Hemingway and Gellhorn," which
starred Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman,
and his much anthologized fiction and journalism
have appeared in "Esquire," "Details," "Playboy,"
"BlackBook," "LA Weekly," and "Tin House."
He is a resident of Los Angeles, which
makes us extra special happy to have him here.
So let me go ahead and hand it over.
Everybody, this is Jerry Stahl.
JERRY STAHL: Thank you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
JERRY STAHL: Thanks so much for letting
me take over your lunch hour.
It's really exciting to be here for me.
You know, I was just using a urinal,
over which I noticed a little sticker for blaze dependency
testing.
At which point, I got paranoid there
was a drug I was addicted to that I've never even heard of,
and they were going to test my urine.
But if anyone can relate to that joke,
they're probably not here now.
That's what I'm guessing.
But I was just telling Keith before, it's
really convenient-- I don't want to-- I love Google
as if they were blood relatives of mine.
But I was mentioning when you go to my Google page--
and I have to say that with my wife here--
but it mentions that I'm married to Brandy Alexandre, who nobody
will admit knowing was a *** star in the '80s who I've never
personally met, never even seen any of her work.
And I was just consulting-- it was very fortuitous for me
to be here at Google, so I could figure out a way
to tell the world, when they Google me
and see me in the corner, that I'm not
in fact married to Brandy.
We were never friends.
It was never serious.
I never met her.
And it means nothing to you.
I'm dying up here.
But on to "Happy Mutant Baby Pills,"
which is my newest book.
I'm going to try to be as close as possible,
so there will be feedback to the mic.
Wow, the electricity in this room.
Sometimes-- I've spoken all over the world,
and sometimes you just go to a place,
and you just feel that vibe, like wow.
This is an audience that's on fire.
I can't lie.
I don't know what they're putting in those mung beans.
So as my host, Keith, mentioned-- what he left off
the resume is that I was a professional ***
user for a number of years, which was really a great career
move for me because it got me a book deal and a movie deal.
And I was doing a lot of research,
which I didn't know was research at the time.
And I mention that because all my books are essentially
part of one big, massively OK-selling oeuvre.
And this book, "Happy Mutant Baby Pills,"
which I see they have on the chair, which makes me
feel like I'm in geography class, which is kind of great.
The textbook is there.
This book relates to drugs because the story behind it,
even though it's a novel, is-- like all junkies of the '80s
and '90s, including the late, lamented Lou Reed,
I got hepatitis C, which is what you
get if you're lucky enough not to get AIDS.
Not to get technical, but if you bleached your needles,
you would kill the hep C. But you needed to boil them
for 10 minutes to not-- I mean, you
wouldn't get AIDS if you used to bleach.
As you can see, drugs have affected my memory.
So if I'm not exactly linear, indulge me.
Or not.
And to kill the AIDS virus, you had
to boil needles for 10 minutes.
And junkies are always in a hurry, because places to go
and people to see.
I didn't do that.
So what happened is two things.
Right before I started writing this book,
Abbott Pharmaceuticals came up with a cure for the disease
I had, or so they thought.
And I did a trial drug program at Cedars-Sinai.
Pays me massively to plug them wherever I go.
I am, by the way, contractually bound
to mention *** and Cedars-Sinai whenever I speak.
So that's out of the way.
We can get back to business.
And long story short, the second I took the first pill,
and they started talking to me, they said, oh by the way,
this stuff is so toxic that if you so much as
touch a pregnant woman, or if you happen to sweat
and she touches a little drop of your sweat in your bed,
your baby will essentially be born purple with wheels.
That's not what they said.
I'm being scientific.
We've already lost one.
And Lenny Bruce said, if people don't start walking out
in the first five minutes, you're *** up.
So I'm glad they're fleeing.
If there's not an empty room by the time we're done,
I will have failed.
And what happened is, my girlfriend, now my wife,
had just told me that she was pregnant.
So boy was my face red.
So I've just gotten married.
We're pregnant.
And I'm now on a drug that is so toxic, if I sneeze
in her direction, we're going to have a sideshow
act on our hands when the kid's born, if we're optimistic.
So had to get rid of her for a while.
We split up while she was pregnant-- which is just
a lovely thing to do to a pregnant woman--
so that I could be on this massively toxic drug,
the other side effect of which was-- I'm sure none of you
have had this experience-- was basically aside from itching,
sweating, all that, all the normal stuff, which
I'm no stranger to, was basically
like being on bad acid, not to brag, for about 12 weeks.
Which is great for a writer, but not so great
for getting through life.
So it occurred to me a couple of things.
I was a drug addict for years and put
God knows what strain of bus station toilet water
into my veins.
And now I'm on these drugs that are totally legitimate, more
or less, because they haven't been FDA approved,
and they're so toxic, and there's so many of them,
that I became obsessed with all the drugs
we are taking that are kind of involuntary.
And I became obsessed with the impact on pregnant women.
And I became obsessed with probably really the creepiest
side effect of the fact that there is complete deregulation
and that there is GMOs in everything
and that there is pesticides and that Monsanto runs the world,
and if you have stock in them, forgive me.
It will go up, and we will die, but what the hell.
The point is, even mother's milk at this point
has Benzene, toilet cleaner, window washer, lithium,
which in my case, my kid gets a little free lithium,
it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
And it freaked me out.
So I wrote a book about this because what can you
do when you're a novelist?
You have all this information, and you have a captive audience
if someone decides to pick up your book.
And you've got to make it entertaining.
So that was the impetus for this book.
Because as I walked in, so many of you
took me aside and said, Jerry, what
was the impetus for this book you
wrote that I've never heard of?
And I wanted to answer that question
so that you wouldn't walk away unsatisfied.
How's lunch, by the way?
Is it good?
Everybody good?
I'm trying not to say *** too much because as I was also
telling Keith as I walked in, the last time I actually
had an office job-- and again, I don't mean to brag-- after I
got off ***, I was working at McDonald's at the age of 38.
A man in uniform, ladies.
Poly blend.
In Phoenix, I'd say it's about 105 degrees.
And my job, among others, speaking of poisons,
was to-- every morning, they would deliver the meat
into the parking lot and leave the patties outside in like 105
degrees, vaguely green.
And I got to like scoop the patties up, take them
inside, let them thaw a little.
And then I got to make the Egg McMuffin, Egg McMuffin batter.
And because you are eating lunch,
I won't elaborate on the fact that I
got fired for being caught urinating into the Egg McMuffin
batter.
But not the first time.
So consider the next time you have a McDonald's, all
that-- I see that guy putting his lunch aside.
And forgive me.
I rarely speak at meal times.
We would have provided buckets, had I known.
Consider the number of disgruntled employees
who are in the back.
Because now, your average McDonald's employee is like
a guy with an engineering degree who couldn't get into Google
so now he's at *** McDonald's.
So it is kind of your fault, but not really.
I didn't want to go there.
But yeah, I mean, essentially, you're
putting a man in a McDonald's uniform just by being here.
But I made it out, happily.
I'd probably still be at McDonald's, had they not fired
me.
They had a-- I'm just going to ramble a little bit because it
is Hollywood.
They had a movie we had to watch on how to make the fries when I
got to McDonald's.
And it had a really kind of a great looking guy
and a great looking-- I'm going to say gal.
I don't usually use the word gal, but she was a gal.
And I remember thinking, boy, I bet they went to acting school.
This is probably some Juilliard graduate,
and the best they could do is get a gig doing the how to make
fry tape for McDonald's.
And I guess none of you guys have had bad jobs.
I'm an expert at bad jobs.
Which brings us back to "Happy Mutant Baby Pills."
I don't know why I'm holding it up.
I feel like I'm in a *** infomercial.
I had the experience, in my life, with a lot of bad jobs.
And one of the characters in this book
is a guy whose gig is writing the side effects on pills.
I'm sure you've all seen them late at night,
when you see the ads.
So he's the guy.
His claim to fame is that he came up with the phrase ***
leakage, which is not as easy as it thinks because you don't
want to say seepage, which is what it really was.
The side effects of a lot of drugs,
including olestra, which was in a lot of those low cal potato
chips, it'll be suicidal thoughts, sweating,
night sweats, frequent urination.
Enjoy your lunch.
But you never realize what's in your *** head
until you get plunged in front of a room full of 40 people.
And as you can see, I've prepared extensively
for this talk because I tour the world speaking
about this as an inspirational speaker.
Me and Tony Danza, essentially.
We're like this.
And so this guy's job was to write these things,
and he was a failed writer.
But he came up with *** leakage, and he got promoted.
So I became obsessed with the side effects and the fact
that restless knee syndrome, for example, didn't exist.
They actually hire people to invent diseases
so that they can peddle cures so that guys
like him, in this book, this guy Lloyd,
can be hired to write the side effects for a pill
for a disease that was only created to cure
the disease they invented to sell the pill.
Sort of how Monsanto has developed
a pesticide-resistant plant, that is now
in all the GMOs, that resists Roundup, which was developed
by Monsanto, so that they could sell another pesticide that
will work.
It's just great.
Because basically, we're all eating pesticides all the time,
and they're all inside us.
And now every baby's born with asthma.
Now, as you can tell, I have a scientific mind,
and I'm laser sharp, and I'm sure you all
understand that this is a book about a guy whose first job was
writing bad side effects to medications
and making them sound festive.
Making it OK.
Because seepage, to get back to my original point, seepage,
ladies and gentleman, is nasty.
I mean, around the house, in your body,
nothing that seeps can be good.
But leakage, that is a kind of around the house thing.
Tires leak.
Faucets leak.
So he had the touch.
And I have had jobs like this.
He also wrote the side effects for other medications.
He also wrote the descriptions for marital aids,
which sex toys used to be called.
Sidebar, not to make myself look good,
but before I worked at McDonald's, I
got a job-- because I do have a college
degree-- I got a job being humor editor at "Hustler."
And I was really young, and I thought
it would be really exciting.
And I went to Columbus, Ohio, and they're giving me the tour,
and I thought, wow, this is going to be hot.
And they take me down a hall, and they open this door,
and there's about-- do any of you
remember "The Andy Griffith Show?"
Anybody?
No?
Yeah.
Aunt Bee?
There was a room full of ladies with beehives
who looked like the kindergarten teacher you had in 1968,
'75, '52, stuffing *** into boxes.
And they were just like church ladies, room full of them,
stuffing sex toys into boxes.
Why do I mention it here?
No reason.
But it came into my head, and it seemed very relevant
to this book.
Because this is a book about a guy with bad jobs.
His job after this was writing the festive descriptions
for Christian Singles, which was a website, which
I hope some of you have enjoyed.
I don't know if any of you are like JDaters or OK Cupid.
This guy had the job of writing copy for Christian Singles--
Christian Swingles in the book-- and he didn't like his job.
He ends up getting fired.
He meets a woman, in a roundabout way,
he meets a woman whose job she has decided in life,
she feels *** over by big pharma.
She feels like she's been screwed over.
She wants to have the most mutant baby
she can have as a protest against capitalism.
So she is on a mission to consume every over
the counter-- see ya-- under the counter, beside the counter,
from huffing paint, to all the good stuff we do every day.
For example, forget drugs.
If you're pregnant and need tomato soup,
the lining of the can will deform your baby.
Good news.
But nobody tells you that.
So she decides to consume everything she can,
every drug, every kind of like food stuff that is semi nasty,
like meat, chicken, poultry.
Watch the movie "Food, Inc."
It's a great movie.
It shows you how chickens are treated
and how cows are treated.
God, I sound like some wild-eyed radical
up here when the fact is, I would kill for a Big Mac
right now if I didn't know what was in it.
So these two people-- it's a love story.
It's a guy who had this job-- and they're both ***
addicts, because I did some research,
and I knew a little about that.
And it's really kind of a metaphor
for the world we live in, which is one of involuntary drug
consumption.
And as I say, it's an interesting read
for some people because while I wrote this book,
I basically couldn't put a sentence together in my head
and was on this medication, which
was so strange because the FDA hadn't approved it.
And in fact, I think-- I'm not sure if the version I was on
is the one that was approved, but it's a very strange thing
to know you're being cured.
I mean, it's crazy.
I was one of those guys, I did every-- because
I'd basically been told I was dying for 20 years.
And I wouldn't do the main thing they wanted
me to do, which was interferon, because it
was a very hard, hard treatment, and people would often
commit suicide on it or-- it was worse than the disease.
So I finally get cured.
I'm the guy who rails against big pharma.
I get my *** nuked in a week.
I'm like, the virus is gone, but I
have to continue taking questionably
odd brain-twisting bad acid for 12 weeks.
And so I write this book, where I
can utilize all this information that I'm
learning, what it does to pregnant women, what happens
to us just by existing in this world,
the fact that we live in America, where
we get to breathe and eat and sleep and consume everything.
I mean, you guys work with computers,
so I'm sure you know that all the completely rare earth
minerals that go into like the tiniest
little part of the iPhone or a Prius
are mined by like these poor *** in Africa who
are going to be completely mutant
and radiated themselves just from digging it up.
And China owns 90% of them because they own the places
in Africa where the mines are.
So it's all good news.
And it's all stuff I tried to put in this book.
And as you can tell, it's kind of a light hearted romp.
Because when you're dealing with this kind of information,
you don't want to hit people over the head with it.
You don't want to repel them, the way I apparently
am by driving lunch eaters out into the hall retching.
But you want to get the information out.
And I've been very lucky because I get to do this for a living
now.
The thing about writing is, you're basically
paid to be a weirdo.
I was a terrible, terrible student.
I was a terrible guitar player, which
I wanted to be a rock and roll guy.
So when I was a kid, unlike you, who were probably in school
and doing all these smart things, I'm thinking to myself,
I want a job.
I can do alone, naked, and *** up at 4:00
in the morning, and maybe make a dime.
It's a high bar, but I went for it.
And now that those things no longer matter,
I kind of have that job.
But at my age, I don't parade around naked at 4:00
in the morning because complaints,
family, social services.
I can't do it.
I just can't do it.
Wow, this is a tough room.
I'm used to speaking to people at night
who are drunk, so forgive me.
You may need a drink.
So the thing I did before this, by the way,
was a movie for HBO about Hemingway and Gellhorn.
If you ever heard of Martha Gellhorn,
I'm just going to ramble here because she
was a much braver-- I'm going to switch and talk about World War
II.
Martha Gellhorn was a journalist who was the only person
to be at the invasion of Normandy
while Hemingway was off drinking in a bar
somewhere with his buddies.
She disguised herself as a nurse and got there.
Why do I mention her?
Because in this movie-- and I got a lot of flack for this--
I'm switching out of chemicals because I just
decided lunchtime is no time to discuss toxic chemicals.
Little late in the game.
I don't know how much time we still have.
But it just occurred to me, if I were having lunch,
I wouldn't want to listen to a guy babbling
about *** leakage.
I mean, who would?
Bad choice of material on my part.
So we're going to switch and talk about culture now, HBO.
We all love HBO.
I do.
They employed me.
I got to-- we all have dreams, right?
I wrote this movie about Martha Gellhorn,
and I got to hear my lines come out
of Nicole Kidman's mouth, which is pretty exciting.
And I got to talk about a woman who really meant a lot to me
because she was so much braver than Hemingway.
And there's actually a journalism award
in her name in England every year for the journalist
who takes the most physical risks
in the pursuit of a story.
And why do I mention that?
Because if you are a writer, and if you're wired like me,
you can turn any triumph into an occasion
for peculiar and petty shame.
That's how writers operate.
They get more-- it's sort of like a really lame mass
metaphor of the oyster and the sand.
They can turn all triumph into shame.
So in my case, I got to go to "con," "can," you decide.
"Cans"?
C-A-N-N-E-S. Experts?
Linguists?
Keith is a linguist.
He probably knows how to pronounce it.
KEITH: "Con."
JERRY STAHL: Cannes?
Easy for you to say.
Yeah, OK.
So I was at "can."
And I'm on the red carpet for no apparent reason.
It's dream come true.
Here-- I'm dropping names, by the way.
Clive Owen.
And it was great because the shame
that I managed to attain here-- and I mention this
because it's going to be material for a next massively
mediocre selling book that I have in mind.
I'm on the red carpet.
It's me, Nicole Kidman, Clive Owen.
We're all like this.
I have my picture taken.
I, of course, popped a button in my shirt,
so there's like a little shame bush of chest hair
just like popping out.
All over the world, my moment in the sun, and I've
got like the bush of death, the very untrendy '70s chest hair--
ladies-- puffing out of my shirt.
And that will be the basis of my entire new novel.
And I just wanted to mention the fact that even though,
OK, you're here listening to a guy babbling about *** leakage
and how everything you eat will kill you
and babies will be born mutant and America is in trouble,
but you know what, he had his moment in the sun,
and it was eclipsed by a thatch of chest hair.
And I think we can all learn from that.
Another thing I didn't do when I came up here
was tell you about a book I wrote before this.
This is "Happy Mutant Baby Pills."
Most of my stuff is very high brow, as you can tell.
I wrote a book before this, where I really-- it
was mostly for academics.
It was called "Bad Sex on Speed."
Yeah.
Where, like this, I talked about-- they're
sort of sister and brother books,
so I'm not sure which gender is which.
And now there are 50 new genders,
so I really don't have to decide.
Gender fluid, I think is what my books are.
And also discussing the plague of drugs.
But in this case, methedrine, which
is really big, as some of you kids may have-- you
may know somebody with no teeth.
I have a friend who is a paramedic in Missouri,
who told me the most common burn now is when *** cookers are
in their labs and get careless.
We've all seen "Breaking Bad."
They don't just blow off their face.
They blow off the entire front of their body.
So in effect, they become Ken dolls,
if you know what I'm saying.
And it's very hard to repair.
But in prison, it's a badge of honor
to be a cook with no genitals and no face.
Don't ask me why.
I'm not in prison.
I wanted to mention that.
Why?
Because you're having lunch.
Because you're having lunch, and I think
you need to know that there are novelists out there
on the front lines of really good news for us
in the millennial years.
I mean, I have a baby who's 20 months old,
and I have a daughter who is 24 years old.
Every 23 years, I pop out another little girl.
Because really, you want a child when you're 59.
I mean, it only makes sense that I should be sitting here
sweating whether she'll be out of diapers before I'm in them.
Sidebar.
You should know a little bit about the writers
who are talking here.
I know you've had a lot of notables.
And I wanted you to know this is the guy standing
before you now.
Because I know when I worked at McDonald's-- and again,
there I go dropping names-- we didn't get lunch breaks
so much.
We had inspirational speakers once in a while.
And one of the reasons I'm so happy to be here is
because the last inspirational speech I heard was
at McDonald's.
And they said, you should smile bright enough
to make your customer need sunglasses.
I don't know about you, but it still gets me.
I have that on a pamphlet from McDonald's.
Because, you know, we all have bad days.
And on my bad days, I just look above my desk
at the McDonald's pamphlet, which
has a whole section on NJJ, new job jitters,
where it talks about how often we should shower,
how to shower, why to shower, and how to smile so brightly.
Which was a little scary for me, because when
I was working at McDonald's, again, at 38, fresh off ***,
my teeth weren't even yellow.
They were working their way up to yellow.
There were a vaguely greenish furry around the edges color.
Enjoy your lunch.
And I couldn't get that smile to happen.
And I got fired.
And I guess I've mentioned it twice, so it must still hurt.
So ladies and gentleman, the point is we live in a time
where to breathe is to kill ourselves.
We live in a time where essentially everything
we know or think we know is wrong.
My book before this and before the book before this,
"Painkillers," was about the fact that the Nazis won.
Why do I say that?
Because thanks to these chemicals,
we are essentially, through no means of our own,
committing mass genocide on our own people via cancer.
I'm sure you just saw that report that came out
that said in 10 to 15 years, the cancer rate is going
to keep doubling, to by the time my lovely little daughter is
in her 20s, 70% to 80% of the American public
is going to have cancer.
Why?
So that some *** who works for big pharma
can have a second home and a yacht.
Now, I say that with love, by the way.
And I know they will have to bleep me.
I apparently was the first person
from my last Google lecture-- and I'm
thrilled they asked me back, a little surprised.
I was the first person who ever had
to be bleeped at a Google lecture.
Because you just can't hide class,
I guess is what I'm saying.
And interestingly enough, first vegetarian?
First celebrity vegetarian, anybody?
Adolph Hitler.
Thank you.
Yeah.
He ate veggies.
Wouldn't undress in front of anybody else,
and had one ***.
Thanks for asking.
Blown off in World War I, which may explain World War II,
some theorize.
Now you say to yourself, this guy
is just *** Nazis up here babbling.
He has no logical structure.
It's all part of a plan.
You know what that plan is?
To make you kids feel good.
To make you feel that there is some hope.
And there is.
There is some hope.
We're all going to die eventually.
We'll be out of it.
That's the hope.
The other hope is-- excuse me.
My wife will leave me after this speech.
But you know, it's OK, because Brandy Alexander, according
to Google, is waiting for me.
And boy, was she hot in 1982.
Oh, my, god.
I believe she starred in "Bad Penny."
She always turns up.
That was her banner vehicle.
By the way, again, not to brag, when I was a kid in my 20s,
and I first got to Hollywood, I wrote a movie
about the effects of nuclear war.
It was around the time of "Mad Max" and "Liquid Sky" and all
these movies, which were about the apocalypse.
But we were very young and naive.
And we took money from some investors who operated out
of a place on Hollywood Boulevard that
used to be called The Cave, which turned out
to be a *** theater.
But it literally had stalactites and stalagmites.
So it was a realistic cave.
It was almost like a diorama in a museum.
And I knew the first sign we were in trouble
was when we go to get our first payment, we
had to walk through the theater, 2:00 in the afternoon,
with guys in their rain coats hunched in back.
We had to cross in front of the screen
while they were showing possibly my ex-wife, who I've never met,
Brandy Alexandre, who's really-- apparently
I'm still married to.
But you can't believe everything you see on the internet.
And I went upstairs, and we were paid
$25,000 in quarters, which kind of a dead giveaway
that you're probably not dealing with a legitimate entity.
But quarters work.
We just walked out like Santa, with like these big bags
on our shoulder.
I don't know if you've ever seen $25,000 in quarters,
but bring a truss if you're going to be carrying that.
Nobody knows what a truss is.
Men's magazines used to have ads for trusses.
Ask your grandpa.
He probably has one.
But the reason I'm mentioning this is because this movie,
we had to put in eight sex scenes.
They told us, kids, we love it.
We just want eight special scenes.
But because we were punks and had every badass Hollywood
punk in Hollywood-- including, weirdly enough, Richard
Belzer, who wasn't a punk but was in our movie,
and I want to drop another name because it's
been about five minutes since I mentioned Nicole Kidman.
And anybody can be legit if you drop a name.
That's Hollywood.
So we showed this movie at the *** Cat Theater,
now the-- it's no longer the *** Cat Theater,
it's the Ja-- It's got a new name.
And it's no longer catering to women.
And back then-- what is the name now?
I think it's the Jack of Spades or something really grotesque.
But the point is, there were Japanese tourists
by the bus load who went for a big night to this theater
when we made this movie.
We wanted so badly to be artists,
but we stuck in these eight scenes.
But we didn't really want to do a sex movie because we
had integrity, so we made the most repulsive sex imaginable.
Not repulsive so much as cold, chilly, distant, odd.
The premise of the movie was that in the future, which
is coming to pass, there will be sex negatives and sex
positives.
Those people who can still have sex perform for those who
can't.
That's the future.
And, perhaps the present.
But again, I don't mean to brag, but as an artist,
this was such a big moment of my life.
I was pulling up to the theater just in time
to see I'd say about 40 Japanese businessmen running scared
with their hands over their mouths out of the theater
and into their tour bus because apparently we had succeeded
in writing some really anti-*** sex.
And the point of that is, we ended up replacing "Pink
Flamingos"-- John Waters, some of you might have heard
of-- as the midnight movie Friday nights at the Nuart
Theater.
Am I bragging?
No.
I'm only saying, ladies and gentlemen,
that if my career is any indication,
the worst possible *** can happen to you.
And the worst failures-- I'm tearing up now on the inside--
can turn into a triumph.
And if you're an artist, the great thing about being
an artist-- if I can flatter myself
with that word-- or a novelist, is
that out of the worst moments of despair and torment
is your greatest material.
Hence the thatch of chest hair in "con," "can", "cans."
Cannes.
Cannes, right?
"Con" man.
We've got the "con" man over here.
You really feel faith in a speaker
when he can't pronounce Cannes when he's been there.
It's how it is.
It's not everything it's cracked up to be.
There's about 16 stars and then 75 blocks of parasites.
I was in the middle.
I was the chest hair freak with the brok--
I'm so obsessed with that.
It still kills me.
My big day, and I'm blast-- Nicole Kidman.
Clive Owen.
Either way, I'm not up to Clive standards.
And that is my inspirational message.
If you're having a bad day, if you're having a bad life,
if you're listed on the internet as having a bad wife,
it doesn't matter.
You can turn it all into triumph and use that badness and shame
and terror and self loathing and mortification and agony
to write a book that will get you an audience at Google
while people are eating their lunch.
Thank you so much for having me.
I hope this meant something to someone.
And that's it.
Thank you.
I was told there will be a question and answer period.
I'm not getting a big question vibe, but if there are, please
don't be ashamed.
Clearly I have no shame.
I was up here speaking proudly.
The gentleman asked the question,
how did the lady who took every known drug who huffed paint,
who ate painkillers, who took ***,
who drank, who went so far as to eat
genetically modified soybeans, most dangerous of all,
how did that baby turn out?
It turned out perfect.
Thank you for asking.
Because in the end, you want a happy ending.
Clearly.
Especially in a book like this.
Because a lot of people say, when
they categorize a writer or a novel-- everybody gets
put in categories.
I'm generally-- I'm a feel good guy.
That's where I am.
So that's the ending.
It turned out perfect.
Thank you for asking.
Do you have children?
They good?
It all work?
You know, don't get me started on how Monsanto caused asthma
by everything they eat has pesticides in it
now because the anti-pesticides and the pesticides both--
because that's Monsanto, covering
both sides of the street-- are in the food.
And every kid now is being born with asthma.
Scant help for you, but it's a tragedy.
All kidding aside, it's a tragedy.
How are they doing?
They doing the steroid inhaler?
Yeah?
You think it's just the smog?
Yeah.
Good, good.
I have no medical diploma.
So please take your advice from me.
Are there any other questions?
If not, thank you.
It's really been an honor.
And I hope something here hit somewhere.
Appreciate it.
Oh, another question.
Or were you waving goodbye?
I couldn't tell.
The idea for "Hemingway and Gellhorn?"
Actually, the director, Philip Kaufman,
who-- I don't know if any of you are film buffs.
He did "The Right Stuff," "Henry and June," "The Unbearable
Lightness of Being."
He came to me because Hollywood being Hollywood,
1 out of every 10 projects goes anywhere.
I mean, basically an idea-- ideas
are like *** in Hollywood.
Like one out of every five bazillion spermatozoa make it,
and something results.
So I didn't pitch it.
They came to me with the idea.
I am, as you can probably tell, not
the best pitcher in the world.
But I try not to have to go anywhere
where I have to sell myself because you'd rather
have them call you.
So this was just one of those lucky breaks
where the director brought me in.
And originally, the late James Gandolfini, who was a producer,
was going to play Hemingway, which would have given it
a whole other, insert joke here.
But great guy, and he, despite his whole image,
had a very deep other sort of artist side
to him, which is pretty wonderful.
And that obviously didn't work out,
and we switched to Clive Owen.
But happily, to answer your question,
I did not have to pitch.
Did you ask that because you have
some ideas you'd like to-- are you
a screenwriter, potentially?
You've got to get known.
Yeah.
I know.
I got really lucky because literally, I
went from living essentially on the street with nothing
to I write this article, which becomes
a book, which Ben Stiller picks up.
And then after we got the money for "Permanent Midnight,"
it disappeared, and he just said to me, hey,
would you like to write a movie with me.
And we became friends.
"What Makes Sammy Run," which is a famous book by Budd Schulberg
about Hollywood, he asked me to write that.
So literally, I'm on a private jet,
like Sly Stallone's private-- I'm
eating Sly Stallone's left over tuna sandwiches
on a private jet to Saint Bart after living in the street six
months earlier, and I got the bends.
So I just got lucky.
So I guess my advice is get lucky.
But you seem like a very smart individual, so I would say,
eloquent as you seem to be, just write what the hell you're
going to write.
Don't ask for approval.
They'll just give you notes that will destroy your *** idea.
So just do what you want to do, and then
after the first 75 people reject you,
the 76th one will take you.
It will be a hit, and then everybody will imitate you,
and they'll call you derivative.
And that's how it works.
And good luck.
I can say I knew you when.
I feel like a footnote to film history.
But just finish it.
What the hell?
Just write something good, and it'll get-- especially now.
With the internet, people make movies so *** cheap,
you can bypass all the crap that most people
used to have to go through.
So you're obviously in a place with all the equipment
you need.
And you have an amazing AV guy.
I can tell because I looked at your monitor,
and you couldn't see my chest hair.
So that is the sign of a good AV guy.
Any other questions, aside from grooming tips?
All right.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.