When I got back to New York my dad asked how the rest of the trip went. I cannot remember his tone, though I wonder now if it was a leading question that I was not ready to answer. I told him it was a smashing success. I couldn’t bear to share the truth. With him, or with myself.
13
Stories Are There for the Telling
“When it is scary outside and people are fearing for their futures, they like to gather in a dark room and stare at a screen, holding hands against the gloom.”
My dad knew how to tell a story, in all formats. Whether it was a bedtime story he told us girls, his husky voice in an NPR interview with Terry Gross, or in a written column eviscerating the Chicago Tribune’s new management, he knew instinctively how a story should come together. I could hear his voice clearly through each medium. I yearned to know these secrets, too.
We began a more official spate of mentoring during my time at VICE in New York. When I started there, I was super green, but I knew I didn’t want to just assist people mindlessly for the next five years, a role young women were often relegated to. My father knew that one of the key ingredients to success was repetition and familiarity. In the beginning he instructed me to watch all that I could and get a feel for what “hit” and what fell flat. My dad’s media consumption was massive, and he expected those around him to keep up. I would get countless emails about watching a new show on IFC or a viral video on YouTube or an important feature doc that had just been at Sundance. When I expressed derision or criticism, he would remark, “You aren’t watching to be a hater. Please turn off that side of your brain and just listen. There are many things for you to learn.”
When we discussed media, which was often, he’d give me his version of homework. These lessons often took place on the back porch of his house—his workroom, where he could be found smoking and wearing the headset that he would take off every so often and toss on the green metallic table with a clank. The family dog, Charlie, sat at his feet, not even bothering to get up when I would come into the makeshift office. She knew who to get up for. My dad would type away, all the while issuing commands from the corner of his mouth.
At one session he attempted to help me focus on which stories were worth covering, and through whose lens: “Okay, so we talked about what you are liking. Can you make a list of people whose careers you admire—four should work. Use the Google machine and trace back how and when they started their careers. Can you do that and report back?” He looked away from the keyboard and up at me to study my response. I eyed the cigarettes on the table and just for a second wanted one.
Instead I answered his question: “Yeah, I can do that. Might take a little while.”
He responded, “Well, you aren’t home for a while and I’m busy. Can we talk tomorrow, maybe late?”
I nodded my head, and he reverted his attention back to the glowing screen in front of him. I’d been dismissed.
I went back up to my old bedroom and checked Twitter. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to be, let alone who I wanted to be. I opened up Word and saw the cursed cursor blinking at me. Let’s start simple, I thought. What did I love? I’d had a sort of religious experience when I watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, a documentary detailing the vast corruption and shocking demise of the energy-trading Enron Corporation. It was a dark, acerbic investigation by filmmaker Alex Gibney. Best of all, the film was a living document that showed those scoundrels for who they really were. I would love to work on something like that.
Then there was Liz Garbus’s HBO documentary film There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, an investigation into a car accident that was less about the crime and more about what it means to be a mother in the twenty-first century. Her film haunted me. I added her name to the Word doc. I had watched Capturing the Friedmans about seventeen times, so I thought Maybe Andrew Jarecki? I didn’t know who to choose as my fourth, but I knew I wanted it to be a woman. I spent hours trying to figure out the next name before it hit me. I had recently met a young woman named Lena Dunham at my dad’s request, and she had the firepower that I thought could translate. She made the list. So now I had four, and three out of four of them were documentary filmmakers that had made dark, disquieting films. I had an answer, but it didn’t seem like a financial possibility. I turned in my assignment and waited for a response.
A couple of days later, he called me. “Good work,” he said. “Let’s see how we can get in contact with these people. First up, meet Lena and Alex in person, if they have time to spare.”
I wanted to stay at VICE but I also wanted to figure out possible next steps. It had been drilled into me early on that if you like the work you do, then it doesn’t feel like work. Could I be a documentary filmmaker? This exercise helped me realize that I had to figure out what made my heart beat faster. I needed to recognize the topics that I clicked on time and time again to find out more, just like these filmmakers had done. I could start by making short films about ideas and problems I was obsessed with and go from there. I loved mysteries and crime, but that seemed too vague. After being assigned to VICE’s science and technology website Motherboard, I realized I was completely obsessed with the Internet and the huge range of stories it created. I mostly gravitated toward crime, sex, and weapons, but all had to have a twenty-first-century slant to make them newsy and interesting to a media-saturated audience.
At Motherboard, I assisted on a variety of projects until I felt it was time to start pitching my own ideas. But how to find the right story to pitch? With the help of my secret weapon, my dad, I was able to focus-group and separate the good ideas from the bad. Even then, I realized that this was an incredibly privileged perch from which to launch my early career. I vowed to take advantage of it but also to do the same for others, if and when it came to be my turn.
My dad told me time and time again to question what audiences are curious about. What drives media consumers? Why is anyone going to sit down and watch this video? In response, we developed the “cultural nerve” strategy. This meant that when considering whether to produce a video, a central question had to be asked: What is it about the story that touches on a cultural nerve? This hypothesis was never more proven than with a short film I produced called Click, Print, Gun.
Faith Gaskins, a field producer with VICE’s HBO team, kept seeing a name pop up in her newsfeed: Cody Wilson. He was a twentysomething anarchist who vehemently believed that it was his right to open-source and manufacture 3D-printed firearms. Faith pitched Cody for a segment for the VICE HBO show, and while I believe it was mulled over for a couple of weeks, the powers that be ultimately passed. She handed what we call a one-pager over to me, with the message “Maybe this would be a good story for you?”
Faith is an unfailingly generous person. She could have kept that information to herself, locked away in some folder on her dusty laptop, but instead she chose to help out a fellow producer to see if the idea could work for someone else. Every day I try and remind myself of this lesson.
I knew the story could go viral the second I got that one-pager. I reached out to Cody by email.
He responded a few hours later.
Erin,
I’d be happy to participate. Perhaps there are some project updates in which you’d be interested.
crw
Before I knew it, I was on a plane to Austin to meet the man on the other end of the email.
When I stepped off the plane and into the hot, dense Texas air, I was relieved when I saw I’d received no word from Cody trying to pull out of the interview. My cameraman, Chris, picked me up in a rental car, honking the horn as he waved excitedly.
We arrived at the slightly abandoned-looking warehouse that was Cody’s work space, and I called him. No answer. I shot him a text as I leaned against the hot car, trying to clear my head and not overthink it. Eventually Cody strode out with a grin on his face and reached his hand out to shake mine. I
grinned back and introduced myself. He eyed me up and down.
Over the course of the next couple of days, Cody introduced us to his friends and business associates but mainly stuck to his ideas and philosophy. I felt the nervousness drain away as we struck up a rhythm. I was like a kid in summer, plotting capers and building forts. He had a way of making eye contact that made you feel like no one else was in the room. (Don’t worry—this is not a story about how we fell in love. One of the many salient things my dad taught me is don’t fuck your subjects.)
During our filming, Cody 3D-printed the lower receiver for an AR-15 semiautomatic firearm. The print could take up to a day, so we were sure to get backups from allies of his. His ideology ran the gamut, but what he valued most was freedom. He explained over beers that he loved America and was a patriot but wanted the technological expansion that had been in the works for decades to continue, untouched by the government. He would fight (using words) for that right and was just fine with being the poster child for the wiki weapons movement. In fact, he enjoyed his bad-boy image, as it set him apart from his conventional contemporaries.
I felt conflicted. I believed in freedom, but as a bleeding-heart liberal I despised guns. They extinguish life, and I would be glad to see them removed from our planet. That said, I did shamelessly go out into the backwoods and fire some guns with this gang of motley boys. I will hand in my liberal/Planned Parenthood ID next time I hit up the DMV.
The 3D-printed gun worked. Back at the hotel I watched the footage late into the night, making sure the story was there. The trip had been a success, despite some nerves early on.
When I got back to New York the next day I walked through the VICE offices with purpose. I had the footage on me and headed straight toward postproduction. Chris, the editor I had been working with for about a year, was seated in his office, enjoying a cup of coffee when I entered. I told him about the scenes I had put together during filming—a tour of Cody’s room, showing us the CAD file, his arsenal, the bullets and the trip to the woods to see if the gun actually worked. Chris looked surprised; he had requested more B-roll on shoots, and I had delivered. He was one of many mentors whose words were gospel to me.
As the edit commenced, Chris mentioned that the film lacked context—yes, the material with Cody was eye-popping, but without another voice it felt one-sided, almost like we agreed with his point of view. I told my dad about it over the phone.
“Well, where did you hear about the story?”
“I heard about it through Faith.”
“Yes, but where did she find out about the story?”
I instant-messaged her, and she said she saw a great version of it in The New York Times.
“Yep, here we come full circle. She saw it in the Times.”
He laughed quietly and said, “Yes, I thought as much. My buddy Nick Bilton wrote it. Email him to see if he can work you in. Gotta jet, on deadline.”
I heard a click before I even had a chance to respond.
I’ve learned since then that you do not take credit for an idea that does not belong to you. Including Nick in the narrative of the story gave voice to the legitimate ethical questions that we as the filmmakers wanted to ask. Nick agreed to sit for an interview while I was shooting another project in L.A. He appeared just on time, answered questions succinctly, and asked if we were close to being done around the one-hour mark. The interview was crucial for the short film.
I begged VICE to host a press screening for the Web film, and they obliged without hesitation. We did it at the Soho House, a trendy private Manhattan club with a screening room. I invited filmmaker Alex Gibney, who did me the honor of attending. My dad was one of the first to arrive and strolled up to me with a look of intent. He wrapped me up into his arms and told me how proud he was. The hug lingered.
He prayed, wished, and ultimately knew that his kids would be successful. Not just because we were his, but because we, as preemies, thrived early on in a world that did not necessarily want us. Maybe it made the sacrifice worth it? I wasn’t always so sure, but that night in that glittering city, a night that I had worked so hard to get to, I believed in our story, in the success of it.
14
Tyranny of Self
Dad: i am looking for something i want you to read. hold on a sec. here it is:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122178211966454607
Me: got it.
Dad: david foster wallace giving commencement at kenyon. he killed himself, but his writing on the tyranny of self, something you and i both deal with, is awe inspiring.
Me: that is true.
Dad: i should work on mowing the lawn you know that I adore you and thinking of the world of you. there is a freshness and rigor in your voice. an awareness of things beyond you that i find really exciting. i know there is probly plenty of mayhem out of view but i just feel really good about who you are becoming. as papa would say “i think you are neat.”
Tyranny of self was one way to put it. Extreme ambition could be another way to describe it.
How was my dad able to figure so much out in such a short life? Many have asked me this question. I thought a lot about it and have come up with a series of answers:
He was naturally brilliant.
His work ethic far outmatched most civilians’.
There was a certain degree of mania and/or narcissism involved in his personality that drove him to extremes.
My brain immediately creates an excuse as soon as I type this. I know that most successful people are, to a degree, selfish and careerist. You need to put yourself first in order to get to that next level. I, too, have inherited this gene, and would rather spend time trapped in my apartment making movies than listening to a friend drone on about that crazy dream they had last night.
My dad could be ruthless, cutting, and focused solely on himself. His program of recovery curbed these selfish impulses, but he and I knew they were permanently there. He was good at hiding them as needed. He always made the joke that he was constantly trying to figure out the right way to be a human being. Almost as if it were a character he was trying out. As a sober person, he lost the ability to cut loose through alcohol and cocaine, so he tried to find other ways. For some time, I was convinced that his Twitter feed was more important than whatever I had to say. Too much coffee or expensive food, micro Internet celebrity and the attention it garnered, smoking insane amounts of cigarettes, driving very fast. These were all ways he could still be “bad.”
Driving was a particularly hazardous endeavor with him. Due to a Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis at thirty-five, he endured radiation, which corroded the muscles in his neck, and thus he had a hard time looking fully left or right. Instead of fixing the problem or asking me to check his blind spot, he would swing our Explorer into the lane he wanted to be in, sometimes putting on his blinker, but mostly not. He just assumed that a car would move out of the way for him. This was true on the highway and in life.
In the summer of 2014, we were alone at our cabin in the Adirondacks. Something had happened with his column days earlier, and he was in an irritable mood. We got dinner at the local chicken shack, a beloved place called Hattie’s. I ordered the same thing that he did. Big-boy order of fried chicken with a side of collard greens and mashed potatoes with a generous amount of gravy piled on top. Diet Coke accompanied the order, naturally. Our stomachs and hearts full, we piled back into the car. He clicked through his music until he found the Replacements, a band that he adored. It was dark now. He cranked the music up almost as loud as it could go. The car began to shake from the bass. It was too loud for me. I watched as he raced back to our green cabin, pushing eighty miles an hour on mountain highways that were known to hide deer. I shouted at him, “Maybe we should slow down!” He grunted in response, paying me no mind. I started to sweat and had a sick thought: This is how I die, in thi
s car with my dad. My heart raced as I watched him, window open, cigarette smoking, foot on the gas. Extreme in so many ways. He did not fear death as others might; instead, I imagine he courted it, taunted it, as if to say, “Look at what I’ve been through already, and I’m still here.”
We arrived back home safely, against the odds, and I slammed the door. “That was way too fast. It wasn’t safe.” He reminded me through gritted teeth to never tell him how to run his show. With that he walked into the cabin living room and closed the door. I retreated to my side of the house and thought about what had just happened. Was I overreacting? I didn’t feel like a cautious person. Why couldn’t my dad hear me when I told him I wasn’t feeling safe? It was like he was willing to do anything to protect me, except when it intersected with his control issues. When it came to that territory, he was unwilling to compromise. Or was there something about me that made him push the mental IGNORE button?
I stayed mad at him for days. The next morning, I glowered at him as he made coffee for the both of us. He just could not stand anyone telling him what to do. I wondered what he was like at work, with bosses and deadlines. Navigating the internal political waters at the Times surely required making compromises.
Even though I was distraught, I didn’t bother calling my sisters to intervene on my behalf. I had the distinct impression that nothing I or my sisters said would elicit meaningful change; only he had the power to dictate that.
As the days passed I tried to just forget about the incident and move past it, but when he asked me if I wanted to get dinner, saying he was tired of hot dogs on the family stove, I shook my head. I lied and told him I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t want to get in the car with him again. I didn’t like not having a way out. He likely didn’t care.
All That You Leave Behind Page 8
