Jess Walter Can Hoop (and Write)

Summary

Fail Better with David Duchovny: Episode Summary – “Jess Walter Can Hoop (and Write)”

Release Date: August 5, 2025

Introduction

In this engaging episode of Fail Better, hosted by David Duchovny of Lemonada Media, Duchovny sits down with acclaimed novelist Jess Walter to discuss Walter's latest novel, "So Far Gone", his writing process, personal experiences with failure, and his deep connection to his hometown of Spokane, Washington. The conversation, recorded live at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, offers listeners an intimate look into Walter's creative journey and the themes that shape his work.

Discussion of "So Far Gone"

Jess Walter's novel, "So Far Gone," serves as the centerpiece of the discussion. The story follows Reese Kinnick, a man who disconnects from society after the tumultuous 2016 election, only to be thrust back into his old life seven years later. Reese's quest to find his missing daughter and protect his grandchildren from a dangerous militia underscores themes of personal failure, redemption, and the complexities of familial relationships.

Notable Quotes:

• "Reese Kinnick is your hero, very much in the Thoreau mold." [12:56]
• "Rhys's problem wasn't really with the world; it was with his family and understanding that." [19:11]

Themes of Failure and Redemption

The episode delves deeply into the concept of failure, aligning with the podcast's overarching theme of embracing and learning from setbacks. Duchovny and Walter explore how failure shapes character and drives personal growth. Walter reflects on his own life, discussing moments where failure led to profound self-discovery and resilience.

Notable Quotes:

• "To be human is to fail – period. And not just to fail once, but to fail a lot." [System Description]
• "But maybe if we fail better, we'll feel better -- and maybe if we can all laugh together in failure, that's a start."

Connection to Spokane, Washington

A significant portion of the conversation centers on Walter's relationship with Spokane, a backdrop that features prominently in his novels. He shares personal anecdotes about his upbringing, the influence of his father, and how staying in Spokane has enriched his writing. Walter emphasizes the importance of specificity and authenticity in his work, attributing much of his creative inspiration to his experiences in Spokane.

Notable Quotes:

• "Staying in Spokane began with the idea of seeing the place for what it is and with its real beauty." [32:10]
• "Spokane has changed somewhat... the music, the culture, but it's still authentic to me." [68:11]

Writing Process and Creativity

Walter provides an insightful look into his writing process, explaining how he often starts with vivid images or scenes that spark the narrative. He discusses his journalistic background and how it has honed his observational skills, allowing him to create rich, believable characters and settings without extensive external research.

Notable Quotes:

• "Ideas come to me. This novel I was just imagining." [08:22]
• "It's so thrilling to realize that you've almost transferred yourself into another person." [23:46]

Personal Stories and Overcoming Adversity

The conversation takes a personal turn as Walter recounts childhood experiences, including a significant incident where he injured his eye at age five. These stories highlight his father's unique approach to parenting—using humor and resilience to teach Walter not to succumb to self-pity, thereby fostering a mindset that embraces failure as a learning opportunity.

Notable Quotes:

• "And so I was missing my family looking out this window, thinking about my ambition." [07:01]
• "My dad had these moments of brilliance that formed the idea in me that what we think of as failure is incredibly entertaining and instructive." [42:36]

Insights on Teaching and Mentorship

Walter shares his experiences and philosophies on teaching writing, emphasizing the importance of helping young writers find their unique voices. He discusses the challenges of mentorship and the balance between offering guidance and allowing students to navigate their own creative paths.

Notable Quotes:

• "If you can reach what you've just described, which is if I know that it was authentic, that it was this pure expression of what I was doing, that really is the measure." [52:45]
• "Finding joy in doing it, that's the only way it's going to happen." [53:12]

The Intersection of Success and Failure

Throughout the episode, Duchovny and Walter examine the thin line between success and failure. Walter reflects on his career trajectory, noting that while his books have garnered significant attention and sales, he still faces the inherent uncertainties and rejections that come with being a writer. This duality reinforces the podcast's theme that failure is not the end but a stepping stone to growth and eventual success.

Notable Quotes:

• "If something great comes out of it, that's an amazing bonus." [65:48]
• "Most of my books have been optioned at some point... but fiction writing is what I love more than anything." [63:42]

Closing Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Duchovny expresses his admiration for Walter's dedication and work ethic, contrasting it with his own more sporadic writing habits. The final moments highlight the deep friendship between the two, underscoring the importance of authentic connections and mutual support in navigating personal and professional challenges.

Notable Quotes:

• "Your dialogue is so human and so funny. It's like, I don't know what the fuck you people aren't seeing." [64:43]
• "If you can reach what you've just described, which is if I know that it was authentic... That's the only way it's going to happen." [53:12]

Conclusion

This episode of Fail Better offers a profound exploration of failure, creativity, and the human condition through the lens of Jess Walter's experiences and writings. Listeners gain valuable insights into the resilience required to pursue one's passions, the significance of one's roots, and the transformative power of embracing failure as an integral part of personal and artistic growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace Failure: Failure is a natural and essential part of personal growth and creativity.
• Authenticity Matters: Staying true to one's origins and experiences enriches creative work.
• Resilience and Support: Overcoming setbacks requires resilience and the support of meaningful relationships.
• Specificity in Storytelling: Detailed and specific settings and characters create more authentic and relatable narratives.

For those interested in the intersection of literature, personal growth, and the nuanced journey of overcoming failure, this episode provides both inspiration and a deeper understanding of what it means to "fail better."

Transcript

[David Duchovny]

Want to listen to your favorite Lemonada.

[Jess Walter]

Shows without the ads? Subscribe to Lemonada Premium on Apple Podcasts. You'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus, Fail Better.

[David Duchovny]

With David Duchovny, the Sarah Silverman Podcast.

[Jess Walter]

And so many more. It's a great way to support the work we do and treat yourself to.

[David Duchovny]

A smoother, uninterrupted listening experience. Just head to any Lemonada show, feed.

[Jess Walter]

On Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe. Make Life Suck Less with Fewer Ads.

[David Duchovny]

With Lemonada Premium Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar. I host a podcast called A Slight Change of Plans that combines behavioral science and storytelling to help us navigate the.

[Jess Walter]

Big changes in our lives. I get so choked up because I feel like your show and the conversations are what the world needs. Encouraging, empowering counter programming that acts like a lighthouse when the world feels dark. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans wherever you get your podcasts. Lemonada.

[David Duchovny]

Hey, just a quick message before we get started. You can now listen to every episode of Fail Better Ad Free with Lemonada Premium on Apple Podcasts. You'll also get ad free access to and exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus, the Sarah Silverman Podcast, and so many more. It's just 5.99amonth and a great way to support the work we do. Go ad free and get bonus content when you hit subscribe on this show in Apple Podcasts. Make Life Suck Less with Fewer Ads with Lemonada Premium. I'm David Duchovny and this is Fail Better show, where failure, not success, Shapes who we are. We've got something special for you today. Instead of sitting in front of a computer screen like I am right now, or chatting inside a studio, for this episode, I got to get out into the real world, quote unquote, for a conversation with the author Jess Walter, my friend. A few weeks ago, Jess and I sat down together at Roman's Bookstore in Pasadena to discuss his latest novel, so Far Gone. It was a packed house at Southern California's oldest independent bookstore, and Jess and I were thrilled to share our chat with everyone who was there. Now we're bringing that discussion to the rest of you on this very podcast. Jess Walter has written eight novels, though his most recognizable book is Beautiful Ruins, a satirical setup of Hollywood with the gorgeous backdrop of the Italian coast. Jess lives with his family in Spokane, Washington, which, as you'll hear, is a fixture in much of his work. This is especially true of so Far Gone, which published earlier this year. The book follows Reese Kinnick, who goes off the grid after the 2016 election, horrified by the state of the country and by his own spiraling mental health. It picks up seven years later, when his old life has caught up with him. He sets off to track down his missing daughter and save his grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia. Ultimately, it's the story of a failed husband and father trying to put back the pieces, but as with all Jess novels, it's extremely funny all along the way. Aside from being a phenomenal author, Jess is my go to buddy to text about basketball, and he's not too shabby on the court himself, though he's. He's since hurt his knee. So here's our chat at Vroman's Bookstore in front of a live audience, including a few friendly dogs.

[Jess Walter]

Now, without any further ado, David Duchovny and Jess Walter.

[David Duchovny]

Nice to see you again. Have you been. Yeah, I thought so. Thanks for coming out. We're. We're doing, we're doing a Fail Better podcast here today. I don't know if you were alerted, so if you've ever wanted to shout anything out and ruin it or make it better, feel free. And we don't actually know what we're doing. I don't know how this format turns into Fail Better, but it could fail miserably, which would be on point or on brand. But it's always great for me. Jess is a good friend of mine and it's always fun for me, not only to read his work, which I, I love unreservedly, but he's really screwed me this time because I as I said, the podcast is called Fail Better and I was really hoping that he would come in here with terrible reviews and poor sales and we could talk about what a disaster this book is and how is he ever going to bounce back from it and all the things that we like to talk about on the podcast, but he screwed me because the book is doing great, it's selling great. I've read these reviews that seem to be written by Jess himself, but I can't prove it. But it's a beautiful book, I love it and I don't know if you guys had a chance to read it yet. I guess it's been out a little bit, so possibly some of you have read it. But I'd like to ask you. First of all, once we were having a conversation, you and I, and you said I had this image, I think you were staying in a hotel In Santa Monica. And you said, I saw somebody working out.

[Jess Walter]

On the gymnast rings.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, yeah, on the gymnast rings. And you said, and I could be making this up, but what I recall is you said, I want to write a novel about that person. I want to write a novel that ends with that image. And I thought, how interesting. And I thought, is that how you start your novels? Because I've never in my life thought, gone from an image to a story, maybe a feeling, maybe a scene, but. And I. Did you, did you write that novel? This is a multi part question that's gonna take. Take up the first 60 minutes. That's it.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, I failed at writing that novel, which is. No, yeah, I was watching the gymnast rings at Venice beach and I was just. I was standing there. I was actually here for a Hollywood meeting that of course went nowhere, but it was around Christmas time and they had a big Christmas tree in front of this, of the window at the. Which hotel? Shutters? No, it wasn't shutters.

[David Duchovny]

It was Lowe's, wasn't it?

[Jess Walter]

Lowe's, yeah. You know that tree? Yeah. And I was standing there and if you've ever, if you're not from LA and you spend Christmas time in la, it makes you a little wistful and sometimes even worse. And so I was missing my family looking out this window, thinking about my ambition. I was just watching. It was like five in the morning and someone in the morning, someone's walking down the strand, this woman, and she just set her stuff down and started swinging from ring to ring. And it wasn't so much that I wanted to write a novel about her, as these feelings that were unearthed, all of a sudden I was just filled with this desire to be free of my ambition. And at the time, how much I felt like things weren't working out and I just wanted to leave the earth briefly in that moment of lost gravity. And that is ideas come to me. This novel I was just imagining. I was so fed up with politics. And in 2023 and 2024, and you know on Sunday afternoons when your phone buzzes at you and you look at it and realize you spent five and a half hours on your phone that week, I realized how much I was doom scrolling. I literally get three texts a day and two of them are from him. And so I'm just thinking, what am I doing on my phone?

[David Duchovny]

I'm like, have you checked the Internet?

[Jess Walter]

Right, exactly. Look. And so I had this idea that I just wanted to leave. I wanted to back away. And so in the same way that that image sparked a novel that I'm still writing. Actually, I'm still writing a novel set partly in la.

[David Duchovny]

So you did begin that?

[Jess Walter]

I did. I've started it several times and trying to figure out what it means, how it fits in, how that feeling fits in. And with this one, it was all I wanted to do was leave. I wanted to go off the grid and throw my phone out the window. And so those IM appear in the novel. And so often it is sort of image driven with me, which then kind of leads me into stories.

[David Duchovny]

I find that to be a fascinating answer, by the way. I would sit with that, but I won't. When you started out to write this novel, how much of the story, if you do start with images, it seems like you don't start with story. How much of the story was complete in your mind? Or was it just this scenario in which a father has gone off the grid and then is pulled back in to his family?

[Jess Walter]

Initially, this scenario was kind of a joke for me. I thought, all right, like this guy, my main character, Reese Kinnick, who he is not me. But sometimes he has rants that seem familiar to me. So in 2016, he has decided that he always knew that 20% of his countrymen were assholes, but now they've joined with, with the part of the country that is idiot assholes and have also with paranoid assholes and they've made an unbeatable asshole constituency. And he's dismayed that the asshole ceiling is now 47% in his country. And so he throws his phone out the window, he gets in a fight with his, with his son in law and he goes off the grid. And initially I thought, oh, I'll write this as a sort of Rip Van Winkle story. Like you go off the grid in 2016, you come out in 2024, thank God that's all over you. And I thought, well, that's a two page novel. If you write it there so often it does sort of start conceptually like that. A lot of times it depends on what I'm reading. And if you've read me very much, and not everyone has, you'll find that I don't stick to genres. I really like to write whatever story is kind of in front of me and find a form for it. And with this one, I had been reading a lot of Charles Portis True Grit and one of my favorites, Dog of the and Dog of the south, begins with the main character realizing that his friend has run off with his car and his wife and he Decides to go to Mexico to get his car back. And I love the simple, straightforward stakes of that and the idea that this road trip is gonna take us where we don't expect to go. And so I decided I'm gonna write this road trip novel. And it was so fun starting with this character. Starting with him in this cabin in the woods for eight years, and then his.

[David Duchovny]

But you're not with him for.

[Jess Walter]

No, you meet him. You meet him after he's been out there for almost eight years, and now he's got to come back out of the woods and try to reconnect with the people he's left behind and find his way back into the world.

[David Duchovny]

Well, that is what I find interesting about the book as well. There is this undercurrent in American letters that is in opposition to the American sense of win, win, win, which is going back to Thoreau and Melville and Hawthorne. There's this. I don't call it negative, but there is the part of American letters that retires out of the rat race, that retires out of the Can Do America, the Dale Carnegie America. And I see this novel in that tradition, which is the failure side of. I gotta get back to the podcast occasionally here. The failure side of American Letters is Henry David Thoreau, who's considered during his life an abject failure. Just this bum walking around Walden Pond and, you know, picking up odd jobs. But Reese Kinnick is your, Your. Your hero is very much in that mold, in the Thoreau mold. And I was wondering if you felt, if you felt that while you were writing, if you. If that was in. In your mind at any time.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, definitely. I mean, the, The. The book refers to Thoreau. He reads it, you know, his first night in the. In his new house, which is actually a house I lived in as a kid. I sent him to the place where my dad moved us in 1973 and 1974. A cinder block house north of Spokane, Washington, just along the Spokane Indian Reservation. We had no heat when we moved in, no running water. We had to go to a creek and break through the ice to get water, cook it on our wood stove, so it was drinking water, so it's potable water. And that didn't last very long. We ended up getting, you know, a lot of those conveniences. But I decided I would send him to that very place. And the first night he is reading Walden when he hears raccoons upstairs. And my literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut, always said when people would ask him for writing advice, to cut the first chapter and put a villain in it. And so I can think of nothing more villainous than raccoons upstairs. And so, yeah, it very much kind of, I think, runs through the novel and that whole. From Bartleby the Scrivener all the way through, you know, one of my very favorite stories. I grew up in Spokane, Washington, which is not a literary.

[David Duchovny]

I love how you managed to not have to do any research for this book.

[Jess Walter]

I did, you know.

[David Duchovny]

No, no, I truly admire that.

[Jess Walter]

Well, I, I had just laid my staff off and they're the ones who do the research. No, I don't really have a staff. No, I. Yeah, I really did sort of say I'm going to go to the places that I know I'm going to. I wrote this really feverishly in a. Quicker than anything I've written to talk about failure. Beautiful ruins took me 15 years. My most famous, my most well known book. I don't think any of my books are famous, but my most well known book took me 15 years. And that's 14 years of not getting it, of coming back to it and finding your way back into it. And this one, because I was writing this road trip, I thought it's going to cross borders. He's going to meet up with people who were his friends, who are now angry with him, who have to be his allies. He's going to have these monsters to fight at various stages. And then after crossing a couple borders, like any good journey, like the Odyssey, he's going to come back home. And so I did have a structure that was easy. And then I had these places that I thought, oh my gosh, I can write about this place. I've always known even one of the allies who helps him, there's a police. Retired police officer named Chuck who is. Who is bipolar and probably the worst person you could take on this mission to rescue his grandchildren and. But he comes from a cop who actually returned a stolen bicycle of mine. I.

[David Duchovny]

You. You have him. That was part of his career.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, I took an actual.

[David Duchovny]

You should explain that whole.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah. My son. I've written a piece about living in Spokane, this town I'm from, which is kind of a blue collar town with. And it has a lot of property crime, including bike thievery. And so I at one time had like 12 bikes stolen. And I started buying like other people's stolen bikes from pawn shops just because I felt like it was the circle of life or something. Like I should just get a bike that they can just take right back to the pawn shop. But I bought this one really nice bike, and it got stolen. I was at a basketball tournament, and they cut my lock and took it. And I was like, oh, they're good videos again. And then I get a call, like, two weeks later, and I answer it, and it's this police detective that I had covered as a reporter. And he said, hey, I got your bike. And I said, no, you didn't. And I said, no one's ever returned a stolen bike. And he. So he brought it to me, and he proceeded to tell me that he'd gotten in trouble with the brass. He's a guy covered when he was a homicide detective, and he'd made the brass angry. And so they'd moved him to Property Crimes, which is where they send police officers when they want to kill them or have them retire. And so he was just. Said, I was just going to play out my 30 in property crimes. And then I realized I can fuck with these people by ruining their stats. And so he said, I decided I'm going to solve every crime. And so he would just get the printouts of everything that was stolen, go to every pawn shop in the city, make them show receipts, because, you know, at least 40% of that stuff is stolen. And then he would just fill his pickup and just go return everything. He said, I have contractors weeping. They're like, I've worked in this city for 30 years. I've never gotten a wrench back. And anyway, so he returned my bike, and I'm like, I'm gonna put you in my novel. So. So, yeah, I was sort of.

[David Duchovny]

You know, I carried his last day at work. Everybody was like, get the fuck out of here.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, get out of here. Right? Yeah, he's. He's got. He's changed the solution rate from 3% to, like, 4.8 or something, but they'll never get that to that level again of solving crime. So, yeah, so much of what I was. You know, of what was kind of around me, it was like found art. You know, I was reaching, and that way I could keep writing it in this short amount of time and then follow through with that idea. Like, can you drop out? Can you leave society in that way? I mean, the truth about Thoreau is that he lost most of his teeth while he was up there. He had sponsors who gave him money all the time, several friends. I mean, it's a little bit of a myth. This idea into the wild is another sort of example of how the myth can lead. And so I wanted to do that more in terms of Family. What happens when you turn your back even on the people in your life?

[David Duchovny]

Well, I think it's interesting because the equation becomes he goes off to heal himself in a way. And can you heal yourself alone or do you need to heal yourself amongst other people, probably your own family? And what I found beautiful about your book is that at first he's a guy who's taking the piss out of what's going on in this country right now. And we're behind him and he's right and yes, go be alone. But he has to heed the calling back into society. And so at first it's. It kind of can feel cynical and then it becomes this very, very sentimental, I think, resolution, but earned.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, it's interesting because can you heal yourself? And I think part of the process, I think he had to be up there. But the question, I think that I realized, and this is the thing I love about writing fiction and it's the thing I love about reading fiction as well, is you. You come to know these characters so well that you see things you didn't see in them in the beginning. And Rhys's problem wasn't really with the world, you know, it really was with his family and his daughter and sort of understanding that. And not that the world, you know, isn't. Isn't worthy of his scorn in every way. His son in law has joined a church that has a militia. And the militia trains in the woods under the name army of the Lord. And they'd already made their bumper stickers before they realized people would look at AOL and wonder if they had mail. And so there's a fair amount of mockery sort of built into the danger of the novel as he has to go about these things. But I think that for me, there was a moment where he's been blaming his daughter throughout the whole book for her terrible taste in men. Her two boyfriends, the fathers of her two children he refers to as Sluggish Doug and Shithead Shane. And there's a moment at the end of the when she expresses this real sorrow at having her father's disappointment for all these years. And in that moment you understand the depth of her hurt, but also what Rhys really has to fix, which is he's not going to be able to fix this cultural divide we've fallen into, this reality gap where we have two different sets of information that's so much more dangerous than the generation gap of four generations ago. But he can solve this thing with his family, which is the real issue.

[David Duchovny]

What I find interesting in listening to you talk about that relationship. It's rhyming with the way you talked about your relationship with the characters where Rhys has to see something more in his daughter than he was willing to see before just as you see more in the characters. And I wonder how exciting that is when you're writing. And now I don't want to ask that personal question. If you've taken that kind of morality that one learns maybe when one writes like that to allow yourself to be surprised by a fictional character to allow yourself then to be surprised by a real person.

[Jess Walter]

You know, I mean, it's a little coy asking that question because I've read your books where I think the same thing, you know, where. You know, where, you know, Ridley is. You know that a very similar story. In some ways, I probably stole it unintentionally from the reservoir.

[David Duchovny]

Well, I didn't want to say, but.

[Jess Walter]

Are your lawyers here?

[David Duchovny]

But somebody will.

[Jess Walter]

But, yeah, I think that it really is my favorite part. And I crack myself up writing and I make myself sort of weepy writing. Yeah. And I think when I was a young writer, I was afraid of sentimentality. And because that I think I was afraid of sentiment. And it's a different line for every reader, every human being. But if I make myself feel something really deeply and it reflects back for me there's a moment when I'm writing and I often write about characters who are nothing like me. Reese actually does share a few. We're both ex journalists. He's far more cantankerous than I am, but he shares some qualities. But when I'm writing about characters who are nothing like me often I'll feel as if my humanity is bumped into something I recognize in them. And in that moment, it's so thrilling to realize that you've almost transferred yourself into another person. I have no acting background, but I've always thought of myself as a writer as one of those character actors who you don't really know their name but you've seen them in, like, 40 things, you know? And that quality of being able to sort of take on some other Persona and then write them until the point when you understand them. And it's why. It's why fiction reading builds empathy is because that same process is happening as you're reading.

[David Duchovny]

This is an ad by better help help. It's 2025, and it feels like anything you could possibly need is online. But there's also a lot of stuff you don't need like an overload of information about wellness. Is it a gratitude journal that's going to help or a silent retreat? Fortunately, consulting trusted resources and talking to a therapist in real time can help you break through the noise. Therapy is the ultimate resource since it's adaptable to what you need and are looking for. It's not just for people who've experienced major trauma. It can help you identify personal challenges or priorities, work on coping skills, and set yourself up to be the best you that you can be, whether or not that involves meditating or a social media detox. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is a great place to get started. It's the world's largest online therapy platform and it works based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Users have given BetterHelp Live sessions an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 and you can join a session with just the click of a button. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com failbetter that's better hp.com failbetter Tell me, why would you spend a fortune on wardrobe basics if you didn't have to if there were high quality classic options at more affordable prices? In other words, why splurge when you could get solid staples from Quint? Quint has closet staples you'll be reaching for for years, with breathable flowknit polos, lightweight pants and cozy cashmere Starting at just $50, Quint has you covered for hangs, dressy dinners and everything in between. And Quince's collection is half the cost of similar brands. Quince goes directly to top artisans and cuts out the middleman, which means you get luxury pieces without the markup. Normally I go for basic cuts and colors, we all know that. And it's surprising how swapping in a Quint shirt like a merino wool tea really elevates the look. The quality is noticeable and it's an easy and comfortable way to look even sharper than usual. Keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples. From quince go to quince.comfailbetter for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U I N C E.com failbetter to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com one of the scariest parts of being a modern business owner is the unpredictability of the market, the economy and all the happenings online and how they all influence each other. It can really cost you if you're not sure how to plan or react when conditions change. And they sure change fast. When the future of business feels beyond your control, turn to the professionals at Constant Contact. Constant Contact's marketing platform is easy and effective, not to mention award winning, and it's here to help small businesses like yours. You can create and manage campaigns in just a few clicks and all in one place. Email, text, social media, events, landing pages, you name it, it's there. Take advantage of automated sending, real time reporting and tools to help drive sales. And if you ever get stuck, friendly phone support is included with every plan. That's why over half a million small businesses trust Constant Contact to get them where they need to go. My favorite thing about Constant Contact is that you call all the shots. Even while they're doing a lot of the hard work behind the scenes. Their platform makes your approach to marketing both comprehensive and customizable, regardless of how much you know about marketing itself. Get a free 30 day trial when you go to constant contact dot com. Try constant contact. Free for 30 days at constant contact dot com constant contact dot com but you mentioned Vonnegut, and Vonnegut said this very interesting thing about Indianapolis, which is where he was from. And he was saying how we've lost something in our culture and this is 30, 40 years ago already, where we don't get local fiction, we don't get local storytellers. He said, well, you know, God made some people fast. He made some people super smart and mechanical. And then he made some people really good at telling stories. Stories. And each place, if you think of the ancient Greek world, it's tiny. Indianapolis, even at that time was bigger than the entire ancient Greek world, which gave us most of the stories that we're still playing around with right now. So I wonder, you are an example of somebody who has stayed in Spokane, continues to write about Spokane, and I wonder if that had ever entered your mind. As I'm going to sit here and I'm going to be the goddamn poet of Spokane.

[Jess Walter]

Can I mention who you played in a film recently?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, he played Kurt Vonnegut.

[Jess Walter]

You just played Kurt Vonnegut in the film. So I think sometimes he's like trying to be my friend. So it's a little too hard sometimes, but it's okay. Yeah, it's funny because I had the opposite feeling, honestly. I did not want to be the poet of Spokane. I thought that my hometown was the kind of place you could only succeed by leaving. And so for years I dreamed I will leave Spokane. And I was a dad at 19 and loved that, and then had parents with illness and had more kids. And there was a moment where I sort of felt like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. You know, at the end of the film, everyone's so happy that you stayed in your hometown. But that. That New Year's party at the end when they're singing Auld Lang Syne feels like it's gone on for, like, 10 years now, because people keep coming up and thanking me for writing in Spokane and staying in Spokane. And, you know, I love the whole title and idea of your show, because there was a moment when I realized that staying in my hometown had allowed me to fail, had allowed me to ground out to the shortstop a few times. And I remember the first few times I came to la, I was sort of terrified because I still. I ceased existing in my own set of expectations for myself and started existing in other people's. Same thing. Whenever I'm in New York, there's an invisible scale that I suddenly put myself on. And like most scales, like most ladders, we never look down and think, oh, I'm luckier than those people. We only look up and think, oh, I'll never have that. I won't be as good as that. And I remember sitting in an agent's office in the 90s, waiting to go into a meeting, and I had on a T shirt and a sports coat, as I always do, and my little round glasses. And I looked around and there were 13 of us in the waiting room, all with our notebooks, waiting to go pitch our ideas. And I thought, oh, my God, I'll just be one of these guys if I move down here. And staying in Spokane began with the idea of seeing the place for what it is and with its real beauty. My wife and I had just gone to Italy for the first time, and we went to the Cinque Terre. I thought, in 1997, this is the kind of place you write a novel about. Not the mall at my. In my hometown. So I began making notes for that novel. And it was the whole time we were in Italy, it was like I was. It was like every sense was wide open. I was just describing things. I was curious, how do these fishermen get their boats back in? You know, what's in this soup? Like, I was just. I just felt like I was.

[David Duchovny]

You sound really annoying. We'll have to ask your wife about that.

[Jess Walter]

I did sound about 70. There didn't I. What's in this soup? But anyway. But I. But I just felt like I was seeing the world with traveler's eyes. And when I got home I thought, I want to bring that same attention to my hometown. And it's a really unique place. It's a turn of the century city that sort of stopped growing. It's a 250,000 people and a metro of 600,000. But it's nowhere near anything else else. So it's isolation. It's got the biggest urban waterfall in the world running through the middle. So it's a beautiful and amazing place with this natural beauty and with poverty that I first thought was the opposite of what a fiction writer should write about and a kind of diminished sense of achievement. I guess so. I mean, talk about failure. I think thought this Spokane was the kind of place where if I didn't leave, I would be doomed to being, to failing as a writer. But when I started describing the place as it really is, and there's one essay I can turn to in a book of mine called We Live in Water, called Statistical Abstract from My Hometown, Spokane, Washington, where I identified what I was.

[David Duchovny]

That's a great title by the way.

[Jess Walter]

Thank you. Thanks.

[David Duchovny]

Really, really. Rings.

[Jess Walter]

It rings. Yeah, it's weirdly though, it is one of the few things of mine that ever went viral because of one, one statistic in there. It was number six, there are more adult men per capita riding children's BMX bikes than any other city in the world.

[David Duchovny]

And I don't see how that's provable or disprovable.

[Jess Walter]

Well, that's the great thing about the statistics in this piece. But it was in that, and in that moment I was getting emails from all sorts of Spokane people and texts and pictures, and then from around the world, like people in Belgrade would send me pictures of grown men on BMX bikes. And it was wild to have this one observation about the place, but realizing that my self loathing was because I grew up poor and white and uneducated, that I was sort of loathing myself. And so writing about the place and learning to love its sort of grittiness. And I'm so proud of, proud of the fact that in Spokane, until recently, when we got Zillow drunk like everyone else, a teacher could afford a house, you know, and so you live in a place that maybe feels like it's, you know, its level of achievement isn't as high, but it makes it a kind of a more democratic place. And man, yeah, I've come to love that in My writing. And to think that if I had left, I think I wouldn't be the writer I am today. I don't think I would have. I don't know if. If I would have. I don't really measure success based on other scales. I really got to keep my internal scale by staying in this place. And for a first generation college student with no writers in their family, to publish anything seemed like a triumph. And so every time something good happens in publishing, I kind of feel like I feel this amazing sense of surprise and, and love for the place. That kind of groomed me.

[David Duchovny]

That's beautiful. I think what is worth noting in all that is the richness that you can get from the specificity of where you're at. And I think we can be in danger of losing that because we live, as you said earlier, we live on the phone, we live in the abstract, we live in the world in general. We live all over the globe all the time. And I think we can get in danger of losing the genius that comes from being specific and from staying at home, staying in Spokane in this case.

[Jess Walter]

And I suppose that's what Vonnegut was the other thing he was talking about.

[David Duchovny]

That's what he was talking about, exactly. Yeah. I think, anyway, you mentioned your family and I know you get a lot of attitude from your dad in a way, and a lot of. A lot of your posture towards the loser or a loser or what losing is. And I wonder if you could speak a little about him because I think we can talk about Reese as being you or not you. But I never met your dad and I don't really know much about him, but I felt like there was a lot of him in that character.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, there was definitely a lot of my dad and the character of Rhys partly. The place that he's living is the place my dad dreamed of living. He never sold that land, wouldn't let us sell it because that's where he thought he belonged. Someday. But also, yeah, in that I tend to be a comic writer. And not that I'm not a stringing together jokes, but as a philosophy sort of comic writer. And I really trace that to my dad who dropped out of high school, dropped out of school I think in ninth grade, joined the Navy, got a job in an aluminum plant, became a union office officer, became a union president, eventually really worked his way up and wanted more for his kids. He really pushed us to go to college. But for him there was really only one kind of failure and that was self pity. I got a stick in My left eye, when I was five and was blinded on my left side, was sort of small and runty and wanted to play every sport. And approaching Evel Knievel.

[David Duchovny]

Did we switch chairs?

[Jess Walter]

We probably should have.

[David Duchovny]

I just realized, no, it's not my blind spot here.

[Jess Walter]

My. My peripheral vision.

[David Duchovny]

A lot of freedom now.

[Jess Walter]

My peripheral vision is I can do.

[David Duchovny]

Whatever the hell I want when I.

[Jess Walter]

Used to, when I. I was a point guard on the basketball team, and.

[David Duchovny]

True.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah. And you don't know how many people would fill the right lane on fast breaks thinking that I wouldn't see them if they were over there. And there was one moment we were doing a drill, and my coach. And I was, you know, doing this. I was looking both ways, and my coach said, stop moving your head. And I said, well, I can't see him if I don't move my head. And he said, use your other eye. And someone said, coach, Walter only has one. And he went, oh, no, we're not going to state, are we? So. But anyway.

[David Duchovny]

But so your dad responds to. Yeah, so I just got a. You were playing, and somebody was throwing a stick.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, we were throwing a stick back and forth, as one will. And I only will be judged by early 1970s parenting standards, where you just sent them outside and you made yourself a highball.

[David Duchovny]

Even then, they seemed. Said, you're gonna poke your eye out.

[Jess Walter]

Your eye out. Nope. I swear, nobody warned me.

[David Duchovny]

That was 70s style.

[Jess Walter]

That was the 70s. Yeah. And so anyway, I got a stick in the eye. I had to have three surgeries, had to wear an eye patch.

[David Duchovny]

How old were you?

[Jess Walter]

Five. And I wore an eye patch off and on till I was 8. And at some point, you know, and. And I also was that. That helps make you clumsy and accident prone, but I really am approaching Evil Knievel numbers and broken bones at this point. I'm looking like, at 13 or something, so. And I continued to play sports and do everything. And I think it was my dad who. And this is a really refined idea that I think I got from him. And I can remember these times when these things he would say would resonate. The one I remember the Most, I was 8 or 9. And we had just moved back from that farm. We lived on that house. And they were having a world's fair in Spokane. Expo 1974. The first environmental world's Fair. Remember the crying Indian ad that came from Expo 74? And it was really about cleaning up the environment. But all I was excited about was they had a roller coaster. And I'd never been on a roller coaster. I was excited to go on one. I got in line with my sister, they put us in, they put the bar down. I knew from the Brady Bunch that you raise your arms on a roller coaster. And so it started out and bam. My face hit the bar and I was just spewing blood. It wasn't dripping, it was flying out of my mouth. And the carny, they went about three feet. The carny stopped, it lifted the bar, got me off and sent me back to stand by my dad. And without missing a beat, my dad, without looking down said, how was it? Now think for a minute. If your show is about failure, that's about as failed a roller coaster attempt. Now let's say I had gone on the roller coaster and it had been then great. I would have a roller coaster ride. But what I had instead is a really funny story. And my dad knew how funny that was. I spat laughter and blood.

[David Duchovny]

Even at that age, even at that.

[Jess Walter]

Age I thought that is so funny. And my dad had that just incredibly dry sense of humor. My mom was really quiet. She'd been sort of abandoned by parents and so we all wanted to make her laugh. My dad, my brother, me, my sister. And we were all very funny. We tease each other relentlessly and, and anytime I would complain to my dad, he would just say, you can't feel sorry for yourself. So you're a one eyed kid who doesn't like being called cyclops. And three eyes because I wore glasses. And dead eye, which I liked dead eye because I was a basketball player too. So that one, I could make it your own. But he would just say. And I'd come home and say these kids are picking on me. And he'd teach me how to box and send me back to school and then. And that idea, not to self pity. Another time I said to him in a mopey teenage way, it's not fair. And he said, well, I sure hope I'm not the asshole who told you it would be. And I was just like. So he would say these, he would have these moments of brilliance that I think formed the idea in me that not only is what we think of as failure, not failure, but it's incredibly entertaining and instructive and also creates a connection.

[David Duchovny]

It does with everyone.

[Jess Walter]

Everyone knows that feeling.

[David Duchovny]

Everyone does. What I would like to ask you about is, you know, you talk about that moment where you're making yourself laugh or you're making yourself cry and it sounds masturbatory in a way, but it's not, I can tell you, it's what you do it for. You know, it's like, oh my God. But what happens when. And that's not the reaction that you get. What happens? I mean, I like to joke that you've lost every award, but you succeed a hell of a lot. But there are those moments when you're pitching and we've gone through it together where we're trying to make a movie or a show and we get rejected. And how do you deal with that? How do you deal with the disconnect between. I know when I sat there that it was firing and I was feeling, and I was laughing and I was crying. How, how did it fall down? How did it not get? This book seems to be getting a response that surprises you because I, as you said, it happened very quickly for you. And I remember when you told me about it, you're like, it's kind of short. I don't know. I don't know what it is. But I mean, I've read the reviews and they're, they're fantastic. So that's the other side of it. It's like, oh, success.

[Jess Walter]

Boy, that's such an interesting question because.

[David Duchovny]

I always say that when it's a shitty question.

[Jess Walter]

That is a shitty question. Now that I think about it.

[David Duchovny]

I always say that is an interesting question. While you're thinking how do I answer something else? That is not that stupid question.

[Jess Walter]

I have to say, the first time we were doing a pitch meeting and David introduced me as he's lost every major American Writing award, it was the sort of compliment that I could totally live in because that means I was nominated. So.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, well, yes. Losing those awards, that's a win. No, that's a win. But I mean, just.

[Jess Walter]

That question though really is, I think, fascinating because the thing that you have to arrive at as any kind of artist is a trust in yourself in a way. I like this. Other people will like this and, and sometimes your sense of it is off. It's, it's, it's like miscalibrated in some way. And this happens for me with humor sometimes. Like I do have to sort of. I don't ever want the pathos and the suspense to get lost because I've been trying to be funny and so I'll sometimes. And I had a good friend named Jim lynch, say another writer from. Who defined my writing as stand up tragedy. And I loved that. And when I'm hitting that, I feel like I'm doing what I should do. And so, you know, writing all those years I would show it to friends and they would get back to me. And that is one of the strangest things, is when the thing you think you've done hasn't come through. And now I think I've reached, if anything, in 30 years of writing books, I feel like I've reached a place where if I. If it's not coming through, I know some ways to get back in and kind of adjust it and change it. And that wasn't always the case. I would. One reaction could make me drop an entire project.

[David Duchovny]

Well, do you, do you get reactions while you're writing? I feel like that can be very dangerous.

[Jess Walter]

I don't until I'm about two thirds through. And then I'll show my wife and, and gauge her response. She's a terrific editor. I'll show. Sometimes I'll show my agent or other friends. I have other writer friends. I'll show a little bit. I sort of get to a point where it's almost like I've gotten this to this spot on the hill and I want someone to tell me, yeah, this looks great. I don't show it to too many people and I keep it pretty close to the vest until. Until I know it's really great. And at some point I want to get my agent involved and, you know, all that stuff takes over. But there's a. There's a sort of selfish side to it too, where I want people to be like, oh my God, that's so funny and so sad. And I want the encouragement to kind of push me over the finish line. Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast. Money can be confusing. Should you invest in ETFs, get a travel rewards credit card card, buy a house, or just build a really fancy pillow fort? That could work. No shame in pillow fort game.

[David Duchovny]

Or you could just tune in for clear research backed financial insights.

[Jess Walter]

I'm Sean Pyles, a certified financial planner professional.

[David Duchovny]

And I'm Elizabeth Ayola. We're the hosts of NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast where you bring the money questions and we bring trustworthy information backed by NerdWallet's expert analysis.

[Jess Walter]

Our nerds do the research so you don't have to. We'll help you understand your options so you can make the best decision for your situation. From optimizing your investments and maximizing credit card rewards to making big money moves with confidence. Whether you're planning for retirement, weighing a big purchase, or just want to make your money work harder for you, we've got insights that you can use in real life.

[David Duchovny]

So if you want practical, straightforward, and actually useful financial knowledge, plus a little bit of fun along the way, follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favorite podcast app Future.

[Jess Walter]

You will. Thank you. Our healthcare system is broken in so many ways. We have a healthcare system that's supposed to be taking care of people that is making it literally more difficult for people to put food on the table. So this season, we'll dive into the challenges head first, while also thinking about how we can find a better way, because we all deserve better.

[David Duchovny]

Uncared for.

[Jess Walter]

Season 3 from Lemonada Media, available August 6th. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Duchovny]

Before we open up to questions, because we'd love to do that and get you guys on the show as well. I think when you were saying that, I was thinking about myself. Oh, my God.

[Jess Walter]

Great confession. Yeah. The whole time or the whole event or just that one question?

[David Duchovny]

Most of the week, actually. But when I've been in that situation where there's a disconnect and the public reception is not what I felt in myself. If I felt it in myself, it doesn't matter. It matters a little bit. It's always nice to have a win. But if I've been authentic and if I authentically had that feeling while writing or whatever it is that I'm doing, that becomes enough. And that's a nice place to be. I mean, we were just talking about. Before we came out, you were talking about. It's interesting think of you as a teacher as well, because I said what you. What do you get out of teaching at this point? I'd love to hear that, but I. I said that I just done this movie with these young actors, and we were shooting out in the woods, and I was uncomfortable. It was like, you know, and I'm older guy out in the woods, and, you know, I would like a nice place to sit, you know, not in the mud. And I'm thinking, you know, I deserve a nice place to sit. You know, I've been at this a long time. I've had success. I. I should. I should be taken care of here. And I'm in my mind, I'm. I'm bitching a lot. And these kids are just so happy to be there, and they would kill to have the life that I've had, you know, which is just, you know, a working actor, whatever, you know, to have a life in the arts, to have a creative life. And that was, you know, when you talk about Failure and success. That was something to think about. Just when I said to you your life has been one of a working novelist, of a novelist who writes for a living, you write novels for a living. That is what. That was the goal, I would imagine. Or that was the dream.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, no, it was totally the dream. And I think there is not all.

[David Duchovny]

Those awards that you've lost, right?

[Jess Walter]

No, no, no. But those would help. No. Yeah. It's funny, I'm always inspired because you, you also will try other kinds of art too. And that sometimes would terrify me to. You know, I do write poetry and I'm less confident in my ability to do the things that I've learned to do in fiction. And so. But I think the same thing applies if you can reach what you've just described, which is if I know that it was authentic, that it was, you know, this pure expression of what I was doing, that really is the measure. And that's what you're trying to, trying to get, I think young writers to, to do is to. Is to find their own voice and have it be effective in a way that it touches and reaches other people. And, and that, and, and those aren't necessarily the same thing. And so, you know, getting them to just put in the number of sentences the, the, the failures and the returning to it. You know, most writers really sort of imagine that they. It's a quality I had too. I dreamed as a kid of being a prodigy. I just thought, I thought any day, knock at the door and it would be Philip Roth with a jacket, a smoking jacket, saying, you know, welcome to the club, old man.

[David Duchovny]

You know, Philip Roth and Spokane, right?

[Jess Walter]

Or John Updike, you know, that they would just drive to Spokane and say like, well, you've made it, young man.

[David Duchovny]

We gotta go get that Walter kid.

[Jess Walter]

This short story I've read is. And so. And I think there's, you know, the, the trial and error that it takes to master your voice in something you know, is if you find joy in doing it, that's the only way it's going to happen.

[David Duchovny]

But that's the tricky key because I find that the more I know, the less I can impart because it's all like my gut, right? It's all the taste that I've been able to accrue over the years of doing stuff. And it's all kind of non verbal and just. That's good or that's bad. But when you come to teach.

[Jess Walter]

It'S.

[David Duchovny]

A very, It's a tricky situation because you have these Young hearts in your. Your hands. And, and you're.

[Jess Walter]

And it's amazing how often they think they're doing something they're not, you know, And I have this one writer who, you know, every time he approaches what I think he's really writing about, he kind of veers off. And, and this was a writer in his twenties that I taught at the University of Iowa at the writer's workshop. And I thought, well, he's not there in his life yet, you know, and when he's there in his life, he will understand that. I think this is where his craft has taken. I also could be totally wrong. But I think in watching him, I thought, I think he'll get there because he gets close and then I think it's a kind of fear that kind of has him fall away. A fear of the thing I talked about before, sentimentality. And I think when he writes into the thing that's, you know, that he thinks he's dodging is when he'll get there. Maybe we'll see. Yeah, maybe not.

[David Duchovny]

When I was a teaching assistant, I had, I taught Daily themes, which is kind of journaling, which is prose writing in a way. And I was way off. I mean, I had a guy that I taught who became a major novelist and I didn't see it, you know, I really didn't. I'm not saying he was bad, but I was just like, wow, that's how.

[Jess Walter]

We met, in case you're wondering. So.

[David Duchovny]

Forgive me, forgive me. Those Cs and Bs.

[Jess Walter]

Oh, I mean, what could you do?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, there's only so much I could listen about the one eyed jump shooter.

[Jess Walter]

There's no limit on how much you'll hear about that.

[David Duchovny]

You know, we could spend another hour. Jess and I can spend another hour teaching you how you should be watching basketball, but we're going to spare you that. And let's open up to some questions.

[Jess Walter]

Hi. You mentioned your reporting career. I was wondering if you could tell.

[David Duchovny]

Us a little bit about it and how it may have informed your writing, your knowledge.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, my reporting career. I started as a. At a newspaper when I was 19, as a sports intern covering high school sports. And then worked my way sideways, I guess, to a zoned reporter. And then I became a police reporter. And then. And I sort of loved that. I loved the, the thrill of doing something different every day. I've wanted to be a novelist since I was the time I was 12 or 13. When we were kids, my sister and brother and I wrote a Magaz magazine called Reader's. Indigestion. It was like Reader's Digest, and we would. And so that's how we played. We played writing stories and being journalists. And I always dreamed of going to the Iowa Writers Workshop. I wanted to study with Vonnegut, with John Irving, later with Marilynne Robinson. Such amazing writers there. It wasn't really in the cards for where I'd come from. And so journalism became my path to being a writer. And it was, for me, the great greatest MFA I could have gotten. It was. I was writing every day. I got over sort of the. The fear of publication. I. You do something different every day. You have this incredible sense of curiosity about the world that you get to satisfy and you start to understand systems. And I think, unlike maybe people, if I had just gone for, you know, college, then grad school, and then been a novelist, I think that tends to be a more internal look at the world. And I think because of my journalism background, I was always looking out at the world, looking out at describing things and people. And it's one of the great heartbreaks for me now is that local journalism is in such dire straits. And one of the reasons I think we're so divided, when people say they don't trust the media, what pops into their head, I think, is usually CNN or the New York Times or Fox or whatever media they don't trust. They aren't thinking that the media used to be used to land on your front porch and it would tell you who the honor roll kids were and how the basketball team did at State and why there's still a pothole in front of your house. And we've lost an entire generation of local journalists, some of whom, like Joan Didion and William Kennedy and Pete Dexter, made for amazing novelists as well. So, yeah, it's one of the reasons I made Rhys a reporter as I really mourn the loss of that career that I had.

[David Duchovny]

Yes, I'm glad you mentioned Beautiful Ruins.

[Jess Walter]

Because I just finished that and just.

[David Duchovny]

Blown away by it. It's just a phenomenal book. And I looked up in this option for a movie, which I don't think.

[Jess Walter]

It could work as a movie because there's just so many characters. Any thoughts on.

[David Duchovny]

Well, hoping that maybe a series or. You're not alone in thinking that it wouldn't work as a movie.

[Jess Walter]

That seem. Does seem to be a pretty widespread opinion at this point. It was so close several times I wrote.

[David Duchovny]

That's a very good question because. And I don't mean that in the way that I usually say That's a very good question. Because streaming and the, the advent of the mini, the miniseries again has opened up, I think, a whole new area where you can take good novels. It's usually pretty shitty novels that make great TV because they're real plot oriented and you can, you know, you can see it. What a great novel does is not what a great movie does. But if you can get eight hours, you can get inside a great novel like Beautiful Ruins. So I think the end of your question there is very well taken that it is possible. I think in this day and age now when we're seeing more eight hour attempts at trying to, to create that world rather than a two hour attempt, I would think that it is possible. More possible.

[Jess Walter]

I would like that to happen. And yeah, there were a couple attempts to make a film. Todd Field and I wrote a script that was really concentrated on just the Italy portion of the novel, which I think was one way to do it. And then Sam Mendes tried to make it for a while and some guy, what's his name? Spiel something. Spiel. He optioned it, he had it briefly and, and I thought Steven Spielberg and then he decided to make the Fabelmans instead. So. So different. There have been different sort of. It's come close a few times. But I love the idea of a limited series or an unlimited series. No, no, that would make no sense. I'd love the idea of a limited series. I was told that the, those big prestige ones sort of became dead ends because you can't make a second and third and fourth season. And so the streamers made a few for a while and was like. And they thought, well, wait a minute, why can't we make the Gentleman of Moscow part 2 and 3 and 4? Why can't he go to Berlin or Budapest?

[David Duchovny]

There are ruins all over the world.

[Jess Walter]

Right? There are ruins everywhere. More beautiful ruins. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know, I'd love to see it happen. If we really want to talk about failure, I will talk about my Hollywood career. But that would take like six hours of, of podcasting brilliance.

[David Duchovny]

We'll talk a little bit about that. I mean, but in the sense like it's what is. What feels like failure there to you? I mean it's kind of a lark. Right? Because you never really thought of it that way. You didn't think they're going to turn my. I'm going to be a novelist and they're going to turn my novels into movies.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's come. So movies Are very important. I lived next to a drive in theater from 13 to 18. No, 10 to 18. And we built a tree for it and watched the movies from. With. Which was wild. Is like having the worst seats in center field and trying to call balls and strikes, you know, and so. But we. And we also couldn't hear. And so we had to cut. We cut a speaker one day, and my friend and I wired it all the way back to our tree fort. Remember the speakers used to hang on the car window? Yeah. And we covered it with dirt and took it up the aluminum fence and put it in our tree fort. And we were sitting up there with popcorn when we saw the theater manager just walking toward us, pulling. And he followed the dirt wire straight up to our tree fort where we're just like. We had shorted every speaker behind the ones. We'd taken one from the middle so they wouldn't notice. And we had shorted every speaker beyond that. So when they'd gone to test it that night. So anyway, I love movies and from partly from that child. And I did. I did want to write them. And it is. And. And it's so speculative. It's way. You know what I love about writing a book is if I finish it and the publisher likes it, it comes out. And that. That's all in your control. And I love the collaborative part, but the collaborative part means 30 things have to come together. And that was a hard lesson sort of for me to learn. And then I realized how. How much in the same way I love the work, you know, I love, like. I mean, there could not be less success in what David and I have worked on together. But I just get to hang out with David and just like, chat about stuff and write stories we think are cool and do research into things that may make something. And if it gets made, I've done the same work, you know. And so especially if you get to a point where they pay you a little bit, then you're doing the work you would do anyway. And if something great comes out of it, that's an. That's an amazing bonus if something marginal comes out of it. I don't know how I would feel, but most of my books have been optioned at some point. I've adapted some of them, and then I've written some other things. I really consider it kind of a hobby that I should care about more. But don't. Because fiction writing is what I love more than anything.

[David Duchovny]

I'll say. I mean, I've been in these meetings and on These zooms with Jess trying to, to set up a couple, couple, three shows or movies that we've been through now. And I just can't believe that they're not hiring this guy to write for them. I mean, I just don't know what to say after a certain point. But hopefully we'll be able to work on something, something at some point. But because it's not just. Again with Jess, it's not just the plot of the novels. It's also his dialogue is so movie worthy. His dialogue is so human and so funny. It's like, I don't know what the fuck you people aren't seeing. Like, it's not like trying to, to make Joyce's Ulysses into a movie. It's like you can see these scenes, you can see this dialogue. So, I mean, I'm frustrated for you.

[Jess Walter]

It might be me. I had another person that I think it is you that I pitched with. That I pitched with. Who said, you have to stop scoffing at pitch meetings.

[David Duchovny]

And I said, well, you don't scoff, but the sense of play is sometimes misplaced.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah, I'm a bad student in class.

[David Duchovny]

But then I'm like, fuck, you know, Jess can do what he wants. Like, just let him be Jess.

[Jess Walter]

And, you know, I would love to work on a show that I loved or a movie that, that I. That, you know, that I thought was great. It's so much of that ends up being out of your hands that. To worry about it to me, you know, if. If a project comes up, great. If not, I just work on the next novel.

[David Duchovny]

How do you. How do you conceive of the idea if you were responsible for running a show and say, writing 12 episodes? Do you like the idea of that pressure to deliver, deliver in the next six weeks as opposed to taking your time to write a novel? How does that feel to you?

[Jess Walter]

Boy, that. That kind of responsibility sort of scares me. I mean, it's what you do with the novel.

[David Duchovny]

You see, that's the kind of thing you don't say.

[Jess Walter]

I know.

[David Duchovny]

See, this is the problem, right? Ladies and gentlemen, your showrunner is scared.

[Jess Walter]

I. I would be terrified of all those people relying on me. I'd be like, can we get David a chair? All he does is complain that you. He needs a chair. I would. No, I'm way too empathetic to, to be a showrunner. I would make it. I would. I would just not sleep. It'd be too hard for me. Hey, Jess, I was curious with the Zillow apocalypse and Spokane and hopefully it doesn't go the way of Portland, Seattle. But first. Well, first of all, do you think it could second, for like, for your writing and even for yourself, yourself, what is that changing nature Spokane? Whether it's impact on future writing or how you approach writing. You know, I just curious. No one in LA would recognize Spokane's Zillow drunkenness as. I mean it's the, the prices have only just come up to probably 40 years ago here or something. And one of my very favorite things used to be to show people from LA the house that we bought for $240,000 on which has a car house and an elevator. And that was 20 some years ago, but still this great old stock of houses that you could buy for not much money. And now people are walking around saying, yeah, my house has doubled, tripled in value, not realizing you have to buy something else and that we're constantly pushing people out of the bottom of this system. So Spokane has changed somewhat. And another thing that happened is I think mid sized cities became incredible to live in. Food culture spread everywhere. And so you have Michelin chefs in Spokane, music bands now. And it's terrible for bands, but they have to tour everywhere now. Spokane used to be flyover place. Although I've got a really cool shirt that my wife just bought me because when Led Zeppelin's second gig was played in Spokane and they were on the bill as Len Zeppelin. So I've got this cool Len Zeppelin shirt that you can only buy in spoken Spokane. So what's that? I forget who they open for, but.

[David Duchovny]

You know, I think I just, I just watched that, that documentary and I think I saw that date.

[Jess Walter]

Did you?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, I think they.

[Jess Walter]

Anyway, but, but so, so, so Spokane has gotten better in so many ways. The music, the culture. But in, in that same piece I wrote that in Spokane you're never more than three blocks from a bad neighborhood. And I love that. I love the fact that we live in a kind of economically diverse soup of, of houses changed. There's. There, you know, you have those places that are kind of your barometer. Mine is the Maxwell House Tavern, the oldest bar in Spokane. And you used to go in there and the cocktails were $5. And there was the same row of old guys sitting at the bar like from the minute it opened until like closed and it was bought by these young people and they put in a, they fixed up the, the sand volleyball court and they got better food and now drinks are 650 and the same old guys are still sitting at the Bar. And so as long as those old guys are there and when a seat opens up, they give one to me, then I feel like, you know, the. The. The city retains its. Its dive bars are still dive bars. It's. It. It just still feels authentic to me in a way that I don't think it's. I don't think it's going to be spoiled. The. One of my favorite things is how Spokane people now sort of claim that Portland had. That had a. For a while they had had a. These shirts and posters you could buy that said keep Portland weird. And Spokane has shirts and posters that say, keep Spokane kind of gross. And I love that.

[David Duchovny]

That's awesome. I think it was vanilla fudge.

[Jess Walter]

Vanilla fudge. All right, guys, I think we have time for one more question.

[David Duchovny]

Hi.

[Jess Walter]

I wonder if I want to know.

[David Duchovny]

More about the friendship. Like, did it.

[Jess Walter]

How did you two meet?

[David Duchovny]

Would you.

[Jess Walter]

Were you discovering it?

[David Duchovny]

Informative. It doesn't exist outside of this. You know how it goes. We're like, you know, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Was it through? Tea was through.

[Jess Walter]

Yeah. It was a film that we were working on that kind of fell apart. But, you know, David really, I mean, was a Beckett scholar. He has the. He has the education I dream of. And it's. And really is like, as intelligent as anyone else I know is. You know, I have writer friends, and we have the most engaging intellectual conversations. But most of what we talk about are basketball. Basketball kids, and mostly basketball. And we both play. We both love it.

[David Duchovny]

Jess has a full court game that he's in still. I think he's playing it, which is crazy at his age. But I had to do reshoots for a movie called the Joneses with Demimo Moore in Spokane. And I went up there and I said, hey, Jess, I'm in Spokane. And he said, come run in this basketball game. So I got to.

[Jess Walter]

But I didn't tell him who. Who he was. And guys are playing. They're looking at him like, that guy looks like David Duchovny. But no way. It's. It, you know, way he's coming to Spokane. And so, yeah, the. To this day, they're like, they're not quite sure. Was that really who that was.

[David Duchovny]

But I do cherish our basketball discussion questions. And it should be a book someday of our text.

[Jess Walter]

Exactly. Yeah.

[David Duchovny]

We're just angry about everything.

[Jess Walter]

The book would be called that's Traveling. So.

[David Duchovny]

When is that? Okay.

[Jess Walter]

You didn't used to be able to do that. Yeah.

[David Duchovny]

All right.

[Jess Walter]

I think what's in this soup.

[David Duchovny]

All right, thank you guys so much. Man, Jess Walter is sneaky smart, isn't he? And sneaky funny. Maybe not so sneaky. Maybe he's just outright hilarious. I love his writing. I love his sensibility. Meeting him through his writing for me was like finding a brother. Long lost brother. What we didn't get into in our conversation was to talk about Jess's work ethic, which is intense. He still gets up at 5:30, I think he's 120, but he still gets up at 5:30 and he goes to work and his work is writing. And he works until 2:33. He says he does stuff for a second breakfast, however, at some point in the late morning. But to me that's impressive, you know, because you've got a guy who really forged his career as a writer. It was a far fetched idea to a kid coming from his circumstances. And there he is, still working at it because he knows, he knows how hard he had to work to get here. And he still works that hard to stay there. And he's still doing his best work. He's just so far gone is a tremendous success. It's intimidating and I appreciate it and I'm in awe of it, really. I'm a writer who writes and fits and starts. When I have an idea, I go get it. I write it. I write it fast, I write it hard. I'm not the discipline, sit my ass down and write every day kind of a guy. And part of that is probably because of my fear of failure. I only like to write if I know that I've got something to write. I don't like that feeling of sitting down with nothing to write and then maybe having to face the fact that I got nothing to write today. But I don't think that's even true. I think that's kind of a false cognition on my part. As I get older, I do kind of fantasize about writing every day. Huh. That's a fantasy. You may ask. Maybe it is. Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven't subscribed, subscribe to Lemonada Premium yet. Now's the perfect time, because guess what? You can listen completely ad free. Plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus content like the full version of my post interview thoughts that you won't hear anywhere else. That's more of my recaps on interviews with guests like Chris Carter and Emily Deschanel. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadepremium.com to subscribe on any other app. That's lemonadapremium.com don't miss out. Fail Better is production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zema, Aria Brachi and Donnie Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Krupinski and Brad Davidson. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittles, Wax, Jessica Cordova, Craig Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian Modak. You can find us online at Lemonada Media and you can find me at David Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.

[Jess Walter]

Hi, I'm Erica Mahoney.

[David Duchovny]

You don't know me, but you know.

[Jess Walter]

A version of my story.

[David Duchovny]

Because by now we've all felt the impact of senseless gun violence.

[Jess Walter]

I think a stray bullet flew past me because I hear the it was.

[David Duchovny]

That horrible feeling of dread. Something's wrong. Four years ago, my dad was killed in a mass shooting. My podcast Senseless is about moving forward after the unthinkable. Senseless from Lemonada Media, premiering June 17.