Thursday, May 29, 2008

Monkeys, Monkeys Everywhere


So when one of your all-time favorite writers calls you up and says you should give this newbie named Maggie a shot at freelancing, you give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Frank was right. Maggie is amazing, and not just because she works for practically nothing. (I’m seriously going to take her up on her offer to barter with booze if this economy doesn’t let up.) She’s a natural, gifted writer. She is also willing to collaborate, which is harder to do (and to elicit as an editor) than you’d think. So when Neil and I decided the magazine needed to publish a story on primate research, Maggie was our go-to girl. A serious story needed a seriously good writer. Here’s my fancy interview with my friend and freelancer, Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz.

What were you thinking when we were sitting in Neil's office and we pitched you the story a couple months ago? I honestly knew next to nothing about the subject matter, but I was so excited by the assignment. It's every writer's dream to get a "real" story, one with teeth and guts and room to spread out. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never really did. Well, if you don't count the near emotional breakdown I had writing the damn thing.... (laughs)

You knew going in that the debate between animal rights activists and researchers was vitriolic. What surprised you most? Going in, I thought I could follow the formula, you know, interview persons A,B,C, and D on the animal rights side, and then balance them with persons A,B,C, and D on the researchers side -- easy. The problem was, I had a list a mile long of animal rights people begging to talk, and NOBODY wanted to talk to me from the researchers side. I had countless unreturned phone calls and emails, and it bothered me. It was very easy to draw my own conclusions about why they wouldn't talk, to swallow whole what the animal rights side was telling me about them. Once I realized it was a little more complicated than that, their reasons for clamming up became an integral part of the story itself.

How did you approach the story as a reporter? I went to the bookstore, of course! Any excuse to buy a stack of books.... I didn't have to, though, because the animal rights people deluged me with information. It was stunning how well-researched and organized they are. I had brochures, newsletters, videos, DVDs, magazines, journals, you name it. It was overwhelming, and very impressive.

When you sat down to write, what came out first? The beginning and the ending. In order to avoid the boring "he said she said" I knew I wanted to give the first and last word to the monkeys somehow, so I purposely boxed myself in from the start. It gave me more freedom writing the middle, because I didn't have to worry about one side or another having more airtime or leaving the last impression with the reader. I also knew how rare it was to get inside the labs, so that seemed like a good place to dwell.

How are you different now that you've had this experience?
I see monkeys everywhere. I'm totally not lying. I never knew how many pairs of monkey pajamas my kids owned. I also think harder now, and differently, whenever I hear in the news about medical advancements. It's not really a judgment, it's just more awareness about what they are doing and what it all means. I'm also not afraid of word count anymore. Everything sounds manageable. (laughs)

What's been the feedback so far? Everything that's getting through to me has been very positive. If there's negative stuff, I imagine you're keeping it from me, and me and my thin skin are just fine with that, thank you very much. I've had dozens of people pull me aside and ask me what I REALLY think about research on monkeys, and I like that best of all because my ultimate goal was that the reader wouldn't be able to tell my personal feelings by what I had written.

What sort of writer's remorse are you having about the story (I'm not being presumptuous here... I'm your editor, I KNOW you're wishing you'd done something differently!)? In a way I wish it could have been longer, although that's silly because I don't think people would want to read something that long. There are a lot of people I left out of the story, a lot of subplots I didn't have space to introduce. Even what made it in wasn't given enough attention, and I hate thinking anyone might feel underrepresented or worse, that the shape of the story would have changed with more words. I don't know. Everything I've ever written I would probably write differently now. That's why I don't read any of it.

Shameless Editor Question: Would you ever consider a follow-up? Have I ever said no to one of your assignments yet? I'm no dummy.

Bad Transition Question: You shared the New York Times Magazine piece on blogging, "Exposed," with me last week--how much of you and your experience was present in her experience? Not a whole lot, because she's so young. As I was reading I kept thinking "Damn, I am SO GLAD BLOGS DIDN'T EXIST WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND ANGST-RIDDEN." What made it to my bedroom walls, all that bad poetry and the awful sketches of crying girls, that was bad enough. I really feel for kids today whose every move is forever enshrined in cyberspace.

There were parts, though, that hit home. Blogging is a weird thing. In a way it's a real community builder, an interactive forum, a way to practice your craft and find your voice and learn a lot. In another way, it's a powerful tool that's easily abused -- or misused, really. I've learned what not to talk about on my blog, but I've learned it the hard way.

What motivates you to keep your blog going? Fear. Guilt. Obligation. Perfectionism. (laughs) Some days it feels very sophomoric and egotistical to even have a blog at all. Sometimes I feel a little too exposed. It's strange, the more readers I have the less "me" I become on there. At first, when no one was reading, I felt no pressure at all. Now I feel like every post has to be profound and eloquent, and when nine times out of ten it isn't, I feel like a failure. Then again, when I really feel the need to connect with people, this amazingly supportive group is right there at the push of a button. I've made real-life friends from blogging, and I've become addicted to so many other people's blogs. That makes me want to keep going.

Last Question: Will you still write for me when you're rich and famous? I keep forgetting to get rich and famous, I've got to get on that. It's funny, though, I heard writing might not be the best way to do that.... but I also heard you get to use real silverware in first class so I'm forging ahead.

You want to read the story now, don't you? Well, if you're not my family, my contributing writer, or a subscriber (and why aren't you, may I ask?), hop in your hybrid and go find one at any of these fine magazine purveyors. Ready. Set. Go!

If you want to hear me babble more about the June issue, Maggie and monkeys, check out the C3K Live Show (6/08) in my Video Archive.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Lake Take


Rob Zaleski, former reporter and columnist for The Capital Times, did some of the best environmental reporting I’ve seen in years before he took a company buyout this spring. When I called to tell him Madison Magazine was honoring him with an Editors’ Choice award for his series on Madison lakes and what we need to do to clean them up once and for all, we got to talking…


(Photo credit: Mike DeVries, The Capital Times)

Rob Zaleski: When I wrote [the lake series] I just decided that I was going to cut to the quick. I was going to tell all those that I was interviewing, “Let’s not be diplomatic here. What’s the problem, and what has to be done? Let’s not worry about offending anyone.”

It was amazing to me the number of people I interviewed who were willing to spill their guts out. They all had strong feelings, and I think the fact that people did express strong views really resonated with the public. And I must tell you I was very surprised.

The first story I did I compared Madison to Minneapolis. Roger Bannerman, who’s the stormwater runoff expert in the Midwest– THE guy–he’s the one who first told me about it, that Madison could use Minneapolis as a model even though [the city] didn’t have the agricultural runoff problem in its lakes.

I go up to Minneapolis quite often to visit my youngest daughter. Last summer I probably went there four times and swam laps in their lakes every time. Lake Calhoun, as I noticed in t he article, their biggest lake, has clarity levels of twenty feet right now, which is almost unheard of for an urban lake. That’s why I did that story.

There’s no question there were some local officials in Madison who were angry, who felt that the story suggested that Madison has been complacent in doing anything. And I tried to tell them, “No, I realize steps have been taken but the fact that there were thirty-nine beach closings in Madison last year, what does that tell you?

So that was very encouraging to do those stories and to get that kind of response right at the end of [my tenure at] The Cap Times. It meant a lot. Fortunately, to do a series like that you have to have the support of your editors, and Chris Murphy, the city editor, after we got the response to the first article, just said, “Keep going, keep going.”

I still have four or five people who’ve contacted me in the environmental community who have good followup stories regarding the lakes.

I’m not going to claim that that series is THE thing that’s triggered this reaction to do something about the lakes but I think it helped. It was one of a number of things.

Brennan: What were those other factors? It includes business, and I think [that] component was largely absent in the past, where maybe they paid lip service to it. The business community got involved even though their effort was community driven. The businesses realized that the lakes were their drawing card.

Because of this unified effort, last year they drew 5.5 million visitors to their chain of lakes making it the second-most popular destination in the state behind the Mall of America. It has had a staggering impact on their economy.

If you go to the lakes of Minneapolis, even on a day like today where there isn’t swimming yet, all the beaches will be packed. They’ve got bike and running trails around all the lakes. It’s a gathering place for all different ethnic groups. It’s really something to behold.

Brennan: Maybe our state tourism department should be subsidizing the lakes cleanup here… Madison Community Foundation is working with Clean Wisconsin to come up with a vision. [Dane County Executive] Falk and [Mayor] Cieslewicz happen to be two pro-environment leaders. All the se entities are starting to come together and it’s a matter of coordinating that effort.

Another factor that I think was vital in Minneapolis—they did launch a huge public relations campaign. It’s my understanding—I’d have to check my notes—but there was an advertising agency in the Twin Cities that took on that challenge pro bono, reminding average citizens of the role they play in limiting phosphorus and things like that in getting into the sewers.

Another key component in Minneapolis was they hired a guy whose job was to coordinate the effort and to prevent the inevitable turf wars that break out—different agencies wanting to take credit, different citizen groups wanting to take credit—so that they weren’t fighting each other. He told me that was a full-time job in itself to make sure everyone got a fair amount of credit and that everyone was working together. I see that as the next big step in Dane County, where everyone’s on the same page.

The thing that I found most surprising was that the citizen group was more rigorous and demanding that changes be made than anyone. And the politicians were just kind of swept along. They were surprised that the citizen group finally said, “Enough.” They reached a point in the late 1980s where their lakes were scummy and filled with weeds and people just said enough. I hope the momentum [in Madison] continues in that direction.

Brennan: Give me a brief bio of your career. I’m from Milwaukee, grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, Bay View—home of DeMarinis restaurant, the best pizza on the planet, near the South Shore Yacht Club. My dream as a kid was always to be a sportswriter and to cover the Green Bay Packers. Lo and behold I ended up being sports editor of a newspaper called the Green Bay Daily News in the early 1970s at age 25. It was a newspaper started by striking printers at the Press Gazette. I was there for three-and-a-half years and then I went to United Press International in the mid-1970s as a general assignment reporter and night editor. I became sports editor at The Cap Times in 1981. Did that for three years.

Then I had a fascinating but at the same time nightmarish experience. I was hired by the Los Angeles Times in 1984 and had a dream job as sports editor of their new San Fernando Valley section. It was the best job I had in journalism. The LA Times was a remarkable place to work. But when I got out there I realized I could not in good faith raise three girls in Los Angeles.

[Cap Times editor] Dave Zweifel heard I was unhappy. He created a position of columnist and special projects writer, which I began in 1985. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. In the last ten to fifteen years I began to focus on ordinary people who didn’t have a voice. People who were trampled down by the system, or in their daily struggles needed a voice.

I love writing about ordinary people. It reminded me of my youth in a blue-collar, lower-middle-class neighborhood. Those are the people I’m comfortable with and those are the ones who don’t have anyone looking out for them.

Brennan: What happened at TCT? You were asked to reapply for your job? What I’m telling people is that I was very disappointed by what happened. I wish them all the success in the world because some of my best friends are still there. Like Doug Moe, I was disappointed that I had to reapply. Not only that but quite frankly, none of the new jobs that were created had my name on them as far as I was concerned. And so the buyout was fairly generous—I had been there twenty-six years. But as I told them, I’m looking forward to a second career now. I sure as heck am not done reporting and writing in the Madison area.

It’s unfortunate what happened. I wish I could’ve stayed there under the same circumstances but obviously it’s a different operation now. I could’ve reapplied but the five-and-a-half years that I worked for UPI was the only journalism job I really didn’t like and the reason is the motto at UPI is “a deadline every minute.” You’re constantly feeding that beast. I prefer to do in-depth stories. That’s where I think my strength is.

Most anybody who’s worked for the wire services would tell you that the journalism is somewhat reckless. I’m not convinced that the web is the wave of the future for daily newspapers. That’s another two-hour conversation! I think it’s going to play a role but it’s not going to be the wave of the future. They’ve got to find a way to draw more average people to the web.

The people who are reading newspapers on the web are still the eighteen- to thirty-year olds. The majority of those are males and they’re only being selective in what they read. To me, blogs—Mike Ivey at The Capital Times described it we—are just commentary without the facts. There’s a lot of yelling and screaming on forums. Average people are intimidated by that.

I think the long-term future is probably going to come back to TV somehow. But I still think there’s a place for in-depth reporting and it’s probably going to be unfortunately almost all of it in magazines.

One of the first things I did after I left The Cap Times was take out a subscription to the New York Times. Thank God they’re still around and I hope they always are. … Now the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is get my New York Times and go to a coffee shop. I gotta tell you, it’s wonderful.

So what are some other memorable stories that made a difference in someone’s life? I can tell you the craziest reaction was to a column. Sometime in the early 1990s I was looking at the AP wire and saw that South Dakota was bracing for a tourist boom because of the success of Dances With Wolves. It was a slow news day and I wrote a column poking fun at South Dakota, warning tourists that if they’re expecting to see Kevin Costner sitting next to a stream in the Black Hills it’s not going to happen. I was basically saying that South Dakota was a nice state but it was one of the dullest, most "blah" states in the union and it’s shocking to think that tourists were going to be flocking there in large numbers.

Someone in Madison, who was from South Dakota, sent that column to a disc jockey in Rapid City. The way I was told, the disc jockey read it over the air all day on a Saturday. I was flooded with hate mail. It was unbelievable. There was a fifth-grade class in Pierre that spent its whole writing session [on it]. One guy threatened me. We got phone calls from taverns in the middle of the night. How they got my number I have no idea.

It got so bad. I still have the boxes in the basement. I ended up getting over five hundred letters. It went on for over a month. To try and appease all these people—TV stations were calling and interviewing me and wanting to know how I got to be this horrible person—The Cap Times ended up running a full page of hate letters. It was funny at first. But when it continued on and on… it was bizarre.

Out of over five hundred letters I got one applauding the column. It was from some little old lady who lived out in the middle of nowhere who said she was from Wisconsin. She had met a guy from South Dakota, gotten married, and he had dragged her out there. She had been living in hell ever since. She thought I was right on and she actually said that she was writing the letter in her attic and that if her husband knew if she was writing it he would kill her. She signed it Myrtle from Aberdeen.

Brennan: Any others? A series I did about five years ago on how Wisconsin lost its democracy and fell prey to corporate interests, a trend that began with the election of Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1988; a piece I did in 2006 on the devastating effects of coal-tar sealants on the environment, after which the Dane County Board banned the use of such sealants in the county; and a story I did in 1990 on the 25th anniversary of unbeaten Monroe High School's victory in the 1965 state boys basketball tournament—the last year before the tournament was divided into various classes.

As for my most enjoyable interview, it was one I did in 1990 with a man named Pete Tollefson, who several hours earlier had gone on strike and was about to lose his job—after 21 years—as a bus driver for Greyhound. We met over coffee on East Washington Avenue, and he was one of the most charming, decent people I've met—and he was absolutely heartbroken at the thought of never being able to drive a bus again. (He'd grown up on a farm in Mazomanie and said he'd had only one dream from the time he was 9 or 10: to drive a big, shiny Greyhound bus.)

Brennan: What are you missing right now? As a columnist, for twenty-six years I could get up two or three times a week, see something on the news or hear about something and I could write about it or I could go out and find someone who was linked to a major story. Or someone would contact me. Most of my stories actually came from readers who heard about someone who was down and out or something that was happening. And so all of a sudden for the first time in my adult life I wake up in the morning and while this is great, I don’t have an outlet for my feelings, for my views. It’s very strange. And that’s why, sometimes in the next couple months I’m just hoping that I can start writing again.

We do too, Rob. We do too!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Mrs. Farley's Son

I hope Chris Farley’s mom Mary Anne had a nice Mother’s Day last Sunday. I hope her four living children called from wherever on earth they were to say they love her, sent her cards that made her giggle and flowers that make her happy. If anybody was nearby, I hope they stopped over with the grandkids and fussed over her more than usual. And I hope these bright spots in the day brought her joy, because you have to believe Chris Farley’s mom was in pain. I imagine it was a quiet pain, the kind you feel down deep, the kind that washes over you, then weighs down like an anchor on the tips of your toes. The kind of pain that can only come over a mother who has been made to endure the death of a son—a young son, a loving son, a smart and funny son.

Mrs. Farley’s son was the kind of famous only a handful of humans get to be. Rock-star famous. Some Saturday nights Chris Farley was the funniest damn guy on the planet—at least to the parts of the planet that aired Saturday Night Live and the people on the planet who could stay up late enough to watch him. How somebody could get into a character the way he did—with such “gusto,” as one person who worked with him back in his Madison improv days put it—is the stuff of genius.

The Chris Farley Show
, released in hardcover by Viking last week, describes in detail the funnyman’s rise to renown. But to the Farley family’s credit the story does not shy away from the ugly tailspin into obliteration that followed. To be honest, it sort of feels like E! True Hollywood Story with a purpose. Chris’s biography is at times so sad it’s almost too hard to go there with him—even in the pages of a book. But his brother Tom, who co-wrote the book, did. He went there. He says it took him ten years, but he did it. And so I think you should, too.

I promise you won’t regret it. To be honest, I had no personal or professional investment in the book (see the blog before this one). I only know Tom a little, though I think he’s a really nice, warm, well-meaning guy. I certainly don’t know the rest of the Farleys or anybody particularly close them. My closest claim is a friend who grew up a few blocks away from their home in Maple Bluff. That and the time I stumbled into a Northwoods bar to find Chris holding court on a visit to the summer camp he and his brothers cherished. It’s a memory I’ll never forget.

As for Chris’s career, I wasn’t all that impressed with the guy the few years he was an uber-celebrity. Hated Tommy Boy. Still do. Other than the fact that I’ve spent the last fourteen years living in his hometown, and for the last eight I’ve edited a magazine named for that city, I didn’t have any compelling reason to connect with the story—and yet I devoured the extremely well-edited string of recollections from the people who knew him like it was my first meal in a week. SNL captain Lorne Michaels said part of Chris’s attraction was you felt like you knew him. But after reading the book, it’s clear I didn’t. I had no idea the depths of his talent or the sad, frightening toll his addiction took on him and his loved ones.

After speaking with Tom yesterday during a taping of Neil Heinen’s For the Record, I came away feeling like the book was cathartic for him, and that it’s given him a renewed energy to pursue his noble efforts to reach kids battling addiction through the Chris Farley Foundation he runs. Tom turned me on to one more reason to read, appreciate and share this book with others: it can help heal people. Read the speech Chris gave at the Hazelden rehab facility during his three years of sobriety, then turn the pages that lead to his death just a few years later. It’s a real wakeup call to how deep and devastating it is to battle alcohol and drugs.

Tom told us that when Chris was sober, “nobody could touch him.” The skits etched into our collective memory, such as motivational speaker Matt Foley and rabid fan Chris fawning over Paul McCartney, were crafted and performed when the man was healthy. When Chris’s mom could sleep at night.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Everything Happens for a Reason

It took me a while to get over being snubbed by Tom Farley’s publisher, Viking Press. Okay I’m still not over it, but, anyway, a few months ago I asked about excerpting The Chris Farley Show, the new oral history out by Tom and Tanner Colby (he's the guy who co-wrote the John Belushi biography). They said no, that I couldn’t have at anything in the book until after Playboy’s excerpt came out in May. Niiiiiiiiiice. Because I am THE GOLD MEDALIST in the Holding Grudges Olympics (just ask my spouse), I decided I was going to let the book release occasion pass with nary a written word. But then I ran into Jodi Cohen last Friday and I realized why Tom couldn’t secretly break the Viking Press rules for Chris’ hometown magazine—a magazine that put him on the cover in 1994. The reason is, duh, because Madison Magazine is supposed to write about Chris’ early career in Madison. And Jodi, who co-founded and directed Ark's second improv company Animal Crackers, where Chris got his start, is my conduit to those years. Off we go.

What’s your history with the Ark Improvisational Theater (whose most famous members were Farley and Joan Cusack)? I think I joined the Ark in ’84. They were still at Club de Wash and it was before we moved into 220 North Bassett. I was there until it closed in 1991. 220 N. Bassett was a Brinks truck garage that (Ark founders) Dennis Kern and Elaine Eldridge rented and turned into a black-box theater. I started out doing improv and then, when we got the theater, we did started doing sketch comedy and musical revues. Then Dennis and Elaine asked me to direct a (a new company) Animal Crackers, and so we auditioned people. That’s the first time I met Chris. I didn’t know until the book came out that he had come to the theater the night before and talked to Dennis.

In the new Chris Farley book, which is basically a string of quotes—an oral history—that tells his fascinating life story, you get 109 words on page 57. Really up until I had read the book I had very much packaged and just robotically talked about Chris, what I knew about Chris, my experience with Chris. My standard response was, “Chris Farley was in my improv company.” People were like, “Ohhhhhhhhhh! Oh my God what was that like?” It’s like, “Well, it’s hard to be with somebody who’s an addict.” Improv is all about trust and it was always an adventure because I never knew what shape he was going to be in the night of the show. The other thing I would always say, and this still remains true is that he was a really great improviser. And once he became famous and once you saw him on SNL or in the movies you never really got to see what was so great about his comic genius.

What was so great about his comic genius? He was really physical and he could think on his feet. Reading the book, that was kind of the beginning of my feeling the heartbreak of Chris not being on the planet anymore. It really hit me. It was like, "He's gone?" And he was so young and he was really talented. I feel like when he got to be at SNL and in his movies he seems kind of two-dimensional. You know it’s the difference between live theater and something that’s videotaped, it’s not the same. He was a great scene partner. People did get to see him being a physical improviser in the moment. What was so fun improvising with him is how his physicality would manifest in whatever was happening in the scene.

Do you have a specific memory? I remember we would do these characters where we were performing surgery using these teeny, tiny instruments that we would use. He’s so big so the contrast was so funny. And he would take it really seriously, which makes the comedy all the more heightened—that he would really commit to whatever was happening. The other thing was I remember something about him barbecuing and doing this character of Mr. Carruthers and “Yeah, come on over.” It was very much a joyful, jovial character. On SNL all that stuff is scripted so you don’t get to see a lot of the joy or a lot of the creativity that would come out that you do in improv. He was very physical as an improviser and we would always do this one beat in a certain scene where I would run across the stage and jump into his arms. For all the garbage that went on off stage … he had a lot of gusto as a scene partner.

Dennis Kern talks about Chris’ motivational speaker character, Matt Foley, getting its start at the Ark. I don’t remember that. That character scared me when I would see it on TV. It just felt too out of control. And you know he was really trying to pimp his scene partners by either varying off the script or just breaking the boundaries. I do remember watching them crack up, which is always fun. I remember at the Ark, Todd Brown, one of the improvisers, would do “Elvis Before.” And then Chris would come out in some white jumpsuit and do “Elvis After”—after all the drugs and the drinking.

Brian Stack, who was at the Ark with you and Chris, says in the book, “He could do the same thing fifty times and somehow always make it funny." I think part of Chris being a good improviser is his total commitment to whatever was happening in the scene. … I always think comedy basically comes down to taking something really mundane and you add something bizarre. Or you do something really bizarre in a really mundane way. It’s the contrast and that you’re not expecting it, and then when you really commit to it, it just heightens it all the more.

There are a lot of similarities to Chris in the way that you use humor. You wrote, “Humor is what helps me get through, get by, get around, get over things and people … keeps me from digging around on the inside.” That’s Chris. All I have is my own experience. What was so sad about reading the book was the depth of the struggles that Chris had. I think about what it means to live a self-examined life and what it means to just stay at the surface. I know that I’m really sensitive. The good things are really great. The bad things are horrible and I feel like I need to leave the country and I’m going to go live on the side of a mountain and eat a grain of rice that’s lifted up to me by a bucket every day. That’s the ultimate escape fantasy. The thing about being sensitive is that we feel everything. I had no idea about Chris’ OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). It just seems like there was so much suffering and no matter how many people tried to help he was alone with it. I didn’t understand about alcoholism and I didn’t understand about addiction back when I worked with him. In my ignorance I just thought, “You can’t do that," or, "That won’t work," and I didn’t understand what I was up against. As the director, I was the authority figure and Chris was not happy with my response to his habits.

In hindsight what might you have done differently? I didn’t understand how addiction works so I didn’t understand the loyalty to using and what happens when you interrupt that or get in the way of that.

Were you writing for the troupe? I'd written some sketches that the improv group performed. The first thing I ever wrote was with Lois Nowicki, who’s since passed away, and Nancy Deutsch, who lives in San Francisco. The three of us did a show together called “Just Listen, It’s NukeSpeak,” where we did a series of characters, monologues and scenes. It was this very sweet three-person show. I remember Chris was living in Chicago and came back to town and saw the show when he came to the theater to say hello to folks. He had broken his foot. He was on crutches, which I read about how that happened in the book. I remember him being in the lobby one night. We didn’t get along off stage so he’d be very aloof, very cool, and said, “That was really good.” And I was very icy, very aloof, and said, “Thank you.” Just dagger, dagger, dagger, dagger, back and forth.

Is your current improv company Spin Cycle a mature, grownup version of Animal Crackers? I’m still doing short-form improv. Everything I learned back then is what I still do. I very much have Dennis and Elaine’s sensibility. We weren’t really encouraged to do gutter humor. The thinking behind that was anybody can do gutter humor. It's an easy choice in a scene. And what I've learned since is that it never serves the scene. Somebody will grab focus for a laugh or a joke but it never really moves anything along. Also we were encouraged not to swear. I feel a little bit prudish about improv that way. Elaine and Dennis had theater backgrounds. We would do a game called theater styles, and I would read Chekhov and Shaw and Ibsen and Williams, so that when somebody called those things out I knew what those plays were. There was so much theater that occurred in the improv and then in the sketches. I remember we were rehearsing a sketch and Elaine said, “Who brought the samovar?" and I was like, “What the hell is a samovar? I don’t even know what this is but I’m supposed to bring one.”

You wrote in your blog: “Real humor has little to do with telling jokes and everything to do with connecting with others.” I think with anything done well it looks easier than it is. I think that telling stories is really age-old and it's how we connect with each other. I keep thinking that Chris, in his own way, with all of his shtick and everything that went on, he was such a great storyteller. He used all of his body and everything that he had got used in the communication when he was able to do that.

Your writing makes me laugh out loud. I get such joy out of it. Thank you. When I’ve written something that I like, I love to re-read it. I love to let it alone and then come back to it. It’s nice to find it again. I always encourage people who are writers to take improv because you’re working on your writing skills. It’s very much writing in the moment. You are called on to invent things and write on the spot without the censor. And when you’re improvising you really have to keep things moving. I think it’s great training for anybody that writes.

You wear lots of hats in the work that you do. I think about us being human “doings” and us being human “beings.” I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I’m an improviser. I’m an artist. I’m a creator. I’m a comedienne. Those are the labels. And then I think about what I do. I do improv. I do keynote speaking. I do motivational speaking. I do training. I teach. When I think about what’s most important to me, I really think it’s art in whatever way it shows up. When I’m performing I feel like this is what I’m meant to do–when it’s going well, I should say. When it’s happening and it’s clicking there’s nothing else like it. I feel like this is why I’m on the planet this time around. And then when I’m writing and the writing goes well and the writing is well received, I think, “This is my real work!” I think it all has to do with offering something and being received in whatever format that is. I think I know how to do that best when it comes to creating art.

Finally, Jodi, please finish these sentences…

After Russ Feingold came to my one-woman show... I finally realized that we would never job share.
The difference between being funny and writing funny is... being funny doesn’t necessarily involve sitting down, writing funny is all about the editing. This is my final answer after three edits. Make that four edits. Five edits.
What I really love is... making art that is well received by people.
What I really hate is... feeling disconnected from people.

Jodi’s spiffy bio: Jodi Cohen translates how the principles of ‘Improvisational Thinking’ impact our everyday lives, liberate our innate talents and awaken the muscles that allow us to connect, collaborate and generate big ideas. Jodi teaches ‘Improvisational Thinking’ strategies to an increasing number of business and community leaders to afford them new ways to think, respond and behave. These simple, profound and user-friendly ideas inspire improved performance, increased productivity and rampant innovation among participants. Jodi’s studied and taught improv for twenty-five years and is artistic director of SPIN CYCLE Improv Troupe.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

What Moe Knows

Newly minted Wisconsin State Journal columnist (and former Mad Mag editor) Doug Moe talks about life before, during and after The Capital Times

How’s the new gig? What’s different? For 11 years when I was doing the column, I always wrote a day ahead and then would go home. If my eyes had snapped open in the middle of the night and I thought, “Oh, how could you write that?” or, “Gosh, I hope I spelled that guy’s name right,” I could tweak it. Even in the days of two editions of The Cap Times, the first edition didn’t go until 9:30 in the morning. When it went down to one edition you had ’til noon to tweak it. Now the paper hits the driveway at 5:30 and there it is! That was scary the first couple of weeks. The other thing, honestly, is the expanded readership. I think most writers would like that. We signed on a lot of the former daily Cap Times subscribers and so [subscriptions] are up around 100,000 now daily.

Are you thinking differently about how your write your column? Not really. I try to keep it very local. I try to mix it up. I wouldn’t want to have three sports in a row, two histories in a row. I would love to have five funny ones in a row because it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. My first reaction to an idea is, can I make this humorous? It’s really hard. There’s a line in that great Peter O’Toole movie My Favorite Year, where he’s an actor and he says, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

Dave Barry makes a lot of money for a reason. Right, and The Onion is the only print newspaper that’s rapidly expanding its print edition in cities all over the country.

Some people might not know the distance you traveled from one newsroom to the other. [Ed's Note: The State Journal nabbed Moe from The Cap Times—both papers are in the same building on Fish Hatchery Road) What was that experience like? Without getting into the whole thing, that was tough in early February when [Cap Times management] had the meeting and they basically told virtually everybody to reapply for their jobs. And so that started the process for me. Granted, I guess it seems kind of unusual because I’m the only one that did move over. But it happened, and I’m still friends with The Cap Times folks. … Every day it seems more natural to be over here. It was and continues to be ... tough isn’t really the word … it’s unsettled, you know, I think it still is, around the building a little bit.

How did you get started in journalism? I got out of college in 1979, and I didn’t have any loans to pay off. My girlfriend at the time was living in Portage and working for the Portage Daily Register, so I moved up there and it was very cheap to live and I launched a freelance career. I wrote like a maniac for everybody that would pay me. I got a book contract in 1984 to collaborate with a crazy football player named Lyle Alzado on his autobiography. Then in 1986, [Madison Magazine publishers] the Selks created an associate editor position for me, which was really just a writing position, and I did that for five years and became editor in 1991 and stayed through ’97.

What were those years like when you were trying to capture Madison in Madison Magazine? It was great. I think on the financial end they had good years and bad years. … But I was shielded from that. I was just a writer. But even when Gail was publisher and I was editor, she never burdened me with that, which was nice. I wrote a lot. I wrote most of the covers for an extended period, or at least the lead stories. And I wrote a fun column that’s not a whole lot different that what I do in the paper—we called it “Hanging Out.” And then I did some press criticism, which drove ’em nuts out here at the newspaper.

Tell us about your book career, starting with the one back in the '80s. That one, by the way, was never published. I’ve started revisiting it as a biography. His name was Lyle Alzado and his agent lived in Madison. Lyle became the poster child for steroids because he had denied using them for many, many years, and then ended up getting brain cancer and blaming steroids. The medical community was split but he died at 42. It was just a crazy experience collaborating with the guy. The first line of the new manuscript is: “On the night of the day I flew two thousand miles to move into a house with Lyle Alzado, he moved out.” He had a horrible fight with his wife, whom he was breaking up with. I’m cowering under the guest bed, and they’re screaming at each other.

My first [book] was the Royko biography in 1999. I collaborated on a biography of [Madison architect] Marshall Erdman that his family financed [Uncommon Sense: The Life of Marshall Erdman]. The UW boxing book came out in ’04, the column collection a couple of years ago, and now this fall I’ve got a new one, Favre: His 20 Greatest Games [Big Earth Publishing]. I just got a note yesterday from the publisher, they’re really happy with it.

When you sit down to write, what motivates you? Really, in winter, it’s nice to have something to do. Wit this one, there was a lot of research to do first. I managed to get tapes or DVDs of all the games that I’d picked. So then you watch the games and take notes. That’s arduous. What I always tell people is—maybe it sounds simplistic and is easier said than done—but the truth of the matter is if you do two or three pages a day, in six months you’ve got a 400-page manuscript.

Do you have a book you’ve always wanted to do? The Alzado biography, with all the steroid implications, could be important. But the great unfinished story is Leo Burt and the Sterling Hall bombing.

Do you have theories about what happened to Burt? No more than anybody else. I identified him as the Unabomber in Madison Magazine six months before they caught the real one.

Are you expecting the [conversation] about whether or not those 20 Favre games you’ve chosen are really the greatest? I think that’s probably one of the reasons they came up with the idea is that it will generate a lot of controversy or at least discussion. I tried to pick games that had some larger implications other than that he’d played extremely well because he played well a lot of times. I was able to pick the obvious one that people always mention first is the Monday night game after his father died. He played heroically under extreme circumstances. I did the game where he came back after he admitted his painkiller addition. The publisher said [I] managed to capture the arc of his life cast inside these 20 games. That’s what I was shooting for. Like the Monday night Denver game this year when his wife was in the press box and had just decided to come forward [with her book] and so that gave me the chance to write about their relationship. I picked the last game in County Stadium, where Brett scored on the last-second scramble run in the second or third year. It gave me the chance to talk about the Packers history in Milwaukee and the decision to move out. I interviewed Bob Harlan because he was the guy who made that tough call.

When you edited the magazine how hard was it to decide what to write about? When I became editor my goal was to have the best mix of stories I possibly could.

What was it like finding good writers? Some months are better than others, but like you, sometimes you get lucky. A guy named Dwight Allen moved to town from the New Yorker. So immediately I assigned him a column on Roundy Coughlin, who was the hayseed, colorful, widely read sports columnist for the State Journal. He wrote a column called “Roundy Says” from the forties into the seventies, and I always had an idea that if the right writer came along that he would be a great history profile. And Dwight just did a spectacular job. And then over the transom came W.C. Heinz. He had collaborated with Vince Lombardi on Run to Daylight. He was one of a half a dozen best sports writers of his era and I knew him through a mutual friend. But on the 25th anniversary of Lombardi’s death he sends me in a reminiscence of his time with Lombardi. And then we got David Maraniss to write coming back to Madison after 25 years, what had changed. Those are the pieces that I remember, when I was able to get lucky and lure some real special writers.
Finally, Doug, finish these sentences:
Brett Favre should... stay retired (my selfish author side coming out).
Golf shoes... are overrated. I used to play barefoot until some bureaucrat decided what they put on the grass is bad for you.
The kid in me… never met a cheeseburger he didn't like.

Brennan's "Three on Thursday"

1. Hitting the Shelves: The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts ($26.95, Viking) is due out May 6. Big brother Tom Farley and John Belushi co-biographer Tanner Colby conducted more than a hundred interviews to capture the Madisonian and famous comedian’s life story in the words of those who knew him. Sure, the book will sell—Playboy is about to excerpt it—because it features Chevy Chase, Lorne Michaels and David Spade (who comes off looking petty, even spiteful at times), Madison readers will love the walk down memory lane and admire the Farley family’s Midwestern humility willingness to share their story, warts and all.

2. Here’s what Doug Moe told me about Chris Farley: “I went out with [former TV anchor and Congressman] Scott Klug, and he hosted us for three days in New York, which was really fun. We went to the rehearsal and the show that night, went to the after party. Then that next morning we went over to Chris’s apartment and he made us breakfast. He was a cover story in Madison Magazine in February of 1994.

3. Best Writing in April: “It takes longer for two guys to get picked up than one, so we were surprised 10 minutes in when a faded green, two-door Chevy Nova, the victim of a half-ass chop job, cut hard into the shoulder and crunched to a stop on the white gravel 50 yards up the interstate.” – From “On the road? Hitchhiking isn’t what it used to be” by Andy Moore, Isthmus, April 11, 2008