SmartLess

The risk of violence that I was talking about in the 1944 sedition trial, which I write about in the book, the attorney general was actually pressured by a senator who was implicated in the plot, was pressured by that senator into firing the prosecutor in that case.

I read all nine of those. Those are fantastic. You guys are going to have the greatest lunch. I can see that. We are. You would be a great Bernie Gunther.

What I just read was a Len Dayton book.

I read a lot of crappy mysteries and crappy thrillers and crappy mysteries and spy novels.

And I carried this thing around with me and highlighted every section that mentioned Steven Spielberg.

In any store that you walked into, there was a paperback called The Jaws Log that Carl Gottlieb wrote.

There's that perfect explanation of how to solve things from the Ed Catmull book about Pixar or Creativity Inc, where the motto is be wrong as fast as you can.

It's a, you know, a rite of passage of a young man to, you know, walk away from his mother.

Did you read the book? I did actually. That's great, the book is great.

Who's been in hiding ever since he wrote this stuff.

It's great, the book is great. Roberto Saviano, it's fucking great.

Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette changed my life. Oh, wow. That was the record that changed my life.

So I read this book written by Ted Simon who wrote a beautiful book called Jupiter's Travels in the 70s and he was a journalist, I think for the Sunday Times and he decided he wanted to travel the world and he wasn't a biker but he just thought that's the best way to see the world and he's right, it really is the best way.

So he rode this, he got a Triumph and he rode around the world and it took him four and a half years and his book started, he starts like three and a half years in and he's run out of petrol and he's sitting underneath a tree in India somewhere and his bike's propped up there because he's got no gas and he just said, I'm sitting here safe in the knowledge that someone will come and help and that's sort of how the book starts and it had taken him three years to realize that that was a truth, you know.

Your father was so deeply rooted in show business from radio to theater, television. What was that like for you as a kid? To be surrounded by all that, was it thrilling for you or was it kind of like just what dad did so you felt you needed to do it or did you want to do it?

Oh, wow. He had a hat on and he would go down and he would trundle my sister and I occasionally down there and we would kind of sit in the back.

I had seen before my mom took me to see Where's Charlie? I mean, I know you guys were not born yet when these were up on Broadway and I'm sure you're all born still.

not only all you've accomplished in your life, but I also love seeing them light up when I mentioned your father was Abe Burroughs, who amongst many other great things wrote Guys and Dolls, won the Pulitzer Prize for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, both massive, gigantic, massive hits on Broadway.

It's called Bean Fate. And it just came out in Canada.

What's it called? Bean, like a bean, like a jelly bean. Fate. It's a play on a word of BFA or whatever bunch of things, but it's French, but it's not a French book.

It's based on a true story about these sort of guys, you know, in the liquor business during prohibition and stuff. And it's a sort of like a based on true events.

White Fang. Okay. What's that? I don't know. White Fang. It's like... I think it's based on a Jack London book.

I'm about to start shooting something in LA, a show. It's a show based on the book Mr. and Mrs. American Pie.

It takes place in 1969 in Palm Beach about this woman who's a little... It's very like Slim Aaron sort of vibe of the show.

This woman who's a little unhinged. She's trying to get into the high society of Palm Beach.

Comedy or drama? It's comedy. It's like a dark comedy.

But I'm really excited. That's shooting in LA.