Truth and Lies with James Frey

Summary

Fail Better with David Duchovny: Episode Summary – "Truth and Lies with James Frey"

Release Date: June 24, 2025

In this compelling episode of "Fail Better", host David Duchovny engages in an honest and introspective conversation with acclaimed author James Frey. The discussion delves deep into themes of failure, resilience, artistic integrity, and personal trauma. Below is a detailed summary capturing the essence of their dialogue, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. Introduction to James Frey and His Journey (00:01 – 03:25)

David Duchovny opens the episode by introducing James Frey, best known for his bestselling memoir "A Million Little Pieces." He outlines Frey's turbulent path to success, including the book's initial rejection by 17 publishers and its eventual acclaim after being featured in Oprah's Book Club. Duchovny highlights the subsequent controversy in 2006 when Frey was accused of fabricating parts of his memoir, a charge Frey later acknowledged and apologized for.

Notable Quote:

Duchovny [02:01]: "James is no stranger to failure. He's pretty candid about how he's come back from tough times."

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2. Early Life and Rebellion Against Conventional Systems (04:04 – 06:11)

The conversation shifts to Frey's upbringing, emphasizing his inherent contrariness and rejection of societal norms. Raised during the 1980s punk movement, Frey questions the necessity of traditional paths like stable jobs, marriage, and education.

Notable Quote:

Frey [04:10]: "Why do I have to do any of that? Why do I have to do anything but what I want?"

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3. Struggles and Perseverance in Writing (05:41 – 08:24)

Frey recounts his formative years marked by substance abuse and a lack of academic interest. Despite these setbacks, his passion for writing, fueled by influences like Bukowski and Kerouac, drives him to pursue his dream. The discussion underscores the importance of embracing failure as a stepping stone to growth.

Notable Quote:

Frey [08:24]: "Failure after failure after failure... there was some thrill in everybody around you thinking your dream is crazy."

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4. The Oprah Controversy and Its Aftermath (09:04 – 21:31)

A significant portion of the episode explores Frey's experience with Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of his memoir. Initially lauded, Frey found the sudden fame overwhelming and struggled with being typecast as "Oprah's boy." The pivotal moment came during a live show where Frey faced harsh criticism for embellishing his memoir.

Notable Quote:

Frey [18:30]: "I walked out there, and they slaughtered me. All the women in the audience started booing me."

Duchovny reflects on this episode, comparing it to a pivotal failure that, paradoxically, fueled Frey's determination to continue his literary pursuits. Frey shares how this public humiliation reinforced his resilience and commitment to his craft.

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5. Memoir vs. Fiction: The Blurred Lines (21:31 – 27:19)

The dialogue transitions to a philosophical debate on the nature of memoirs and the expectations of truth versus artistic license. Frey argues that memoirs, much like other art forms, are subjective and often amplified to convey deeper truths.

Notable Quote:

Frey [23:57]: "Art is held to a greater standard of truth than the leaders of our nation."

Duchovny adds insights from his own experience, highlighting the historical context of novels blending fact and fiction to engage readers, thereby aligning with Frey's perspective.

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6. Writing Philosophy and Influence of Daoism (29:13 – 34:21)

Frey discusses his adoption of Daoist principles and stoicism in his personal life and writing process. Emphasizing simplicity, clarity, and directness, he explains how these philosophies help him manage fear, particularly the fear of failure, and maintain discipline in his work.

Notable Quote:

Frey [32:38]: "Sobriety is a very simple thing. It doesn't mean it's easy, simple. ... It's about having patience with yourself and others."

Duchovny observes how Frey's writing style reflects his philosophical beliefs, noting its screenplay-like dialogue and unmediated expression aimed at capturing raw emotions.

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7. Exploring "Next to Heaven" and Writing Style (42:45 – 56:29)

Frey introduces his new book, "Next to Heaven," a satirical murder mystery set in the affluent town of New Canaan, Connecticut. He elaborates on his intention to portray sex as a weapon used by both men and women within the complexities of modern sexual politics.

Notable Quote:

Frey [54:09]: "Sex is a weapon that both men and women use."

The discussion highlights Frey's desire to challenge societal norms and expectations through his storytelling, maintaining his defiant stance even in the face of potential backlash.

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8. Personal Trauma and the Message of Resilience (57:03 – End)

In the concluding segment, Frey shares deeply personal experiences, including the tragic loss of his son to spinal muscular atrophy. He contrasts his public failures with private grief, emphasizing that trauma can be survivable with resilience and the choice to keep moving forward.

Notable Quote:

Frey [58:11]: "You can recover. You can recover. I've recovered from addiction. I've recovered from a girlfriend dying, a best friend dying, a child dying."

Duchovny encapsulates the episode's core message: embracing failure and hardship as integral parts of the human experience, and finding strength through persistence and self-acceptance.

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Conclusion

This episode of "Fail Better" offers a profound exploration of James Frey's tumultuous journey through success and scandal, underscored by his unwavering commitment to personal authenticity and artistic expression. Through candid dialogue, Frey and Duchovny illuminate the transformative power of failure and the resilience required to navigate life's most challenging moments.

Final Notable Quote:

Frey [60:22]: "Keep going, man. You're not done yet. You choose the conditions of your life."

---

For listeners who seek inspiration on overcoming failure and embracing personal growth, this episode serves as a testament to the enduring human spirit.

Transcript

[David Duchovny]

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[James Frey]

Lemonada.

[David Duchovny]

I'm David Duchovny and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. James Fry is a writer whose best selling memoir A Million Little Pieces caused quite a stir in the early 2000s. The book, which details his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, was an initial success. That says a lot because it was rejected 17 times before it got picked up by a publisher. Sales then skyrocketed after it was added to Oprah's Book Club, although I think he says in this interview that it was doing quite well even before that. James then found himself in the middle of a controversy in 2006 after being accused of fabricating parts of the memoir, which he later owned up to and publicly apologized. And we get into that. We get into that and his his Take on that is strong and I think interesting. Stay tuned for that. James is no stranger to failure. He's pretty candid about how he's come back from tough times. Hard won perspective. We also talk about his upcoming book, Next to Heaven, and what it takes to become the greatest writer of his generation, or maybe the most defiant writer of his generation. Here's that conversation. Thanks for coming to talk this morning about everybody's favorite, favorite subject. Failure. Failure, failure, Failure.

[James Frey]

I failed a few times in my life means a few hundred.

[David Duchovny]

Well, what I like to start these conversations, unless there's anything pressing on your mind, is to kind of, I guess in a way the discussion is about if you're going to smash a system. And you've described yourself as kind of a punk rock writer, which I like very much. Where did that original system come from? Who instilled it in you? Who taught you? Who, who set, who set the bar for you? And when did you decide to kind of create your own system in a way?

[James Frey]

Great. That's certainly. I can start now if you want.

[David Duchovny]

Take it away.

[James Frey]

You know, like, like a lot of American kids, I was raised going to public schools and I was taught, you know, get a job, pay your taxes, get married, be a good boy, have a good life. Right. I never believed in any of that. I was always like, why do I have to do any of that? Why do I have to do anything but what I want? And, and as.

[David Duchovny]

Where do you think that, where do you think, where do you think that will that contrariness came from? Just born with it. Just something in your soul.

[James Frey]

Yeah, man, I was born with it. From my earliest memories, were asking people why I had to do what they told me to do. Right. Why do I have to follow your rules? Why are your rules more valid than the rules I make? Um, and so I grew up in, you know, I, I, I grew up, I was basically 10 to 20 during the 80s. Right. Right. I was 10 to 20 during the 80s. And the 80s were this kind of awesome time where we had fucking Reagan and we had sort of a reaction to Carter and we had the beginnings of what we're seeing now, which is almost like a very strict surveillance slash control culture. And punks were a real thing in the 80s. We were like this, this. Why do we have to do any of this? Why do we have to go to these dumb schools and learn these dumb rules? It's a joke my own kids say, but like, why the, did anybody ever teach me algebra and geometry? Because I didn't ever Learn anything. And I've never used them, but spent years trying to master them.

[David Duchovny]

I. I use algebra daily. Daily, Daily.

[James Frey]

Well, then you must be living a pretty cool life.

[David Duchovny]

Just off camera is an abac.

[James Frey]

Yeah. And so my, my, you know, those years were kind of lost. I. I drank, I did drugs, I got in trouble, I went to shows, I read books. I kind of like, I barely got through high school. I got into college. College. Because I was an athlete.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, yeah? What sport did you play?

[James Frey]

I played soccer. All things.

[David Duchovny]

It's the world's game, I'm told. I don't play.

[James Frey]

It is. I grew up a little bit outside of the US So I grew up moving around. So I'd grown up playing soccer, but I just grew up with this sense of, why do I have to do anything that anybody tells me? Yeah, growing up, I was a big reader. So in those years, I was also reading, like Bukowski and Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac and Baudelaire and Celine and all these punk sort of older punk writers who had all said the same thing. We all believe they had just said it, you know, 50 years earlier or 75 years earlier. Yeah, I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was 21. I read Tropic of Cancer.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. My dad, by the way, my father Taste. Yeah. My father, born in 1927, Henry Miller, blew his mind and he decided to become a writer after reading those books.

[James Frey]

So good on Henry Miller, same thing. Blew my mind. I ran off to Paris when I was 21 to be a famous writer in 1991. And, yeah, it was great back then again, like, when I moved to Paris, I didn't. I wasn't able to really know anything about Paris except what I could find in the encyclopedia.

[David Duchovny]

You didn't speak any French?

[James Frey]

Didn't speak any French, didn't know any French people, just took off. And it was awesome. And this is what I think is cool about what you talk about is, by any objective measure, those years. I was there for two years and then I came back to the States and it took me eight more years to get a book published. It was immense. Failure after. It was failure after failure after failure after failure after failure. And I often think of those as some of the greatest times in my life because it was the struggle to get somewhere instead of being there. Right. It was the dedication, the work, the reading, the writing, the failing. There's some thrill in everybody around you thinking what your dream is is crazy.

[David Duchovny]

Right?

[James Frey]

And you, you locking down and pursuing it in a solitary Manner against all odds. Right. And.

[David Duchovny]

And not a lot. Not a lot of encouragement is what I'm hearing either. It wasn't like people were saying, you're close, you're getting there, you're close.

[James Frey]

No, it wasn't ever, you're close, you're getting there. It wasn't ever. You're gifted and talented. It's going to be great. It was. Are you fucking out of your mind? Like, what the fuck are you doing? You're going to wake up someday and be 55 and you're going to say, what the fuck did you do with your life? And I may say that occasionally as a 55 year old, but at least it doesn't have to do with what I do for a living.

[David Duchovny]

I'm in total agreement. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's go to Oprah and a Million Little pieces then. Yeah. What a. What a wonderful nightmare for you. I'm sure, I'm sure there have been, you know, I don't mean to gloss over it to this point where we're like, oh, yeah, it all. I'm liberated now because I'm sure there was real pain involved in there and confusion at some point.

[James Frey]

A lot of it.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. But, you know, because one of the things, you know, on this podcast, I'm talking to, you know, successful people, and so they've gotten past whatever failure they're talking about. And I think what is interesting sometimes is to sit down in the actual moment of it. And because, you know, you've got different roads coming out from this point. You know, there's. There's many different directions you can go at this point. And here, here you are, now you're okay, that's great. But there was that moment where you're like, I don't know if I'm going to be okay. You know, this feels. I'm ashamed, I'm humiliated. It's not humility I'm learning here, it's humiliation. So let's speak.

[James Frey]

I will say I didn't think of it that way. It was an interesting experience. I had written a million little pieces. It's like this book that was written to defy rules, to defy convention, to defy genre. Right. When, when we sold the book, it was a big problem because people read it and they were like, well, what is it? And I, I would always say it's a book.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, good. Yeah, it's a good answer. But you had tried to sell it as fiction first, is that right?

[James Frey]

Well, we had, we did sell it as fiction. Random House bought it as a novel. And then when they bought it, they. In the contract, there was a thing that said there was a chance they would publish it as a memoir. And in that contract, if you're. If you're selling a publisher nonfiction, you have to, you know, cop to the veracity of it, which I refused to do. I didn't. I said, this isn't 100% true. You can publish it however the fuck you want. And then when it came out, I did the dance. They told me, just go, say it's true. Everybody does it. So I did that, right? The book got picked by Oprah, and it sold millions of. Literally millions of copies in a couple months. And I started seeing a therapist around that time because I was suddenly wildly famous, which I never expected. You don't become, like, sort of punk rock novelist to imagine anybody would ever stop you on a street in soho and ask for your photo and autograph. But more than that, I really hated being Oprah's boy, right? I didn't want to be the Dr. Phil, a fucking addiction on Oprah. I didn't want to. I didn't want to be her little guy that. That she called up when she wanted somebody to give a drug addict a hug. I didn't like any of that. So I was overwhelmed by sudden fame and. And. And a kind of fame that kind of made me sick to my stomach. And I started seeing this therapist about, like, how do I manage all of this madness, this tsunami that' but one of the things I had said to him, which I have said publicly before a million little pieces came out, and I've said it since, is when I got into this only game for me, the only game, it wasn't to be the punk rock band that played in the local garage. It was to be the fucking Sex Pistols. It was to be the biggest, most controversial, most divisive, most polarizing, most radical writer on the planet. And, you know, it all blew up. And I remember I went back to the therapist that first time after it all blew up, and he was like, you got what you wanted. How's it.

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[David Duchovny]

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[James Frey]

So, hey, I mean, this is a Oprah and her people lied to me. They think they're saints, but they're not. When I went back there for that second show, they told me that show I was going to was called Truth in America and that it was going to be me debating a journalist about literary truth versus journalistic.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, okay.

[James Frey]

And they said that there was going to be a portion of the show about reality TV where they compared reality TV to the news. Remember, this is 2006. So it's a naive.

[David Duchovny]

The beginning of everything.

[James Frey]

So they told me all these things to get me to come back to Chicago for their live show, right? Do I come back? I would have gone back anyway. Even if they said, we're gonna hammer you, I'd have been like, all right, 30 seconds before I walk on that stage, Sherry Salata, who's the executive producer of Oprah, comes over to me and puts her arm around me and says, hey, we just changed the name of the show to True from Truth in America to the James Fry reckoning. It's gonna get a little rough out there.

[David Duchovny]

Just changed it to James Fry is a fucking asshole.

[James Frey]

It's gonna get a little rough out there. Please hold. Please Just. And. And. And so I walk out there, and they slaughter me. And I remember going to the first commercial break.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[James Frey]

All the women in the audience start booing me. I'm sitting in Oprah. Oprah just yelled at me. And a bunch of ladies from the Midwest are booing me. And I remember sitting there thinking, you know what, man? There is nothing you can do here. Sometimes you got to take a beating. And when it's over, you get up and you dust yourself off and get ready to go again.

[David Duchovny]

But in many ways, that's ex. Exactly what you wanted, too. I mean, that's. That was. If you had. If I. If I understand your ambition when you moved to Paris, it was to be a defiant, vilified in. In some ways, like Baudelaire or even Henry Miller, author. So sitting there, getting booed by. By the women in that moment must have been, in some way, the apotheosis of what you were going for. But also what I'm hearing is, yeah, it hurts your feelings as well, you know? You know, there's still. There's still the little boy in there that's like, what did I.

[James Frey]

There's still a little boy who gets beat up on the schoolyard, right? It's just. Does that little boy get up and go back to the schoolyard the next day to fight again? Right? And I was always the little boy who did. And so that's what I did. I dusted myself off. I. My therapist and I were like, you know what? Sounds corny to say my therapist is an old punk. But, like, it was like, all right, man. Now the real game has begun. Now the real fight has begun. And I will. I will say a few things about the whole Oprah thing. Like, people are always like, well, Oprah must have been so hard for your career. And I was like, well, I was number one on the Times list for 25 weeks before Oprah and 58 after. So things worked out. My next book hit number one, too. My next book after that hit number one two. My next book after that hit number one two. Right? All of them, these radical books written with my fingers up, actually, in Defiance even more after the Oprah stuff. And it was like, I'm not gonna let you stop me. This is the game I came to play. It hurts like you have beaten the out of me. I'm lying on the ground. Blood bruises, probably a couple broken bones, but I'm getting up. You. You can't. You cannot stop me.

[David Duchovny]

I. I love that. There's a couple things I want to sit down in here. One is, and I got to write this down because I. Forget it. There's a. There's a misunderstanding between the concept of literature, as the Oprah Book Club conceives of it, and as you may conceive of it. And, and what I hear you saying is, you know, I think the book club people are going to think a memoir has got to be true. My personal opinion is, how the fuck can any memoir be true? You know, it's just memory anyway, as I said.

[James Frey]

Like, when Picasso painted a self portrait, did it have to be photographically perfect or was he given the liberty to portray himself in whatever way he felt?

[David Duchovny]

Or as you say, you're trying to portray a feeling and to get to that feeling, you're going to go, you know, turn it up to 11 or whatever. If what happened was a 6, then you're going to turn it up to, you know, to. That's the kind of a thing. I mean, it's kind of. It's kind of.

[James Frey]

But that. That's also what we all do as artists. Yes, I know when, when you're an actor, like, in a moment, you're not going in there for the six, no. You're going in there for the 11, no.

[David Duchovny]

And, you know, you hope you have a good editor to take your best 11 moments, but I think you're also. What year is that? What year is this happening? 2006, 2005. We're perched there at the beginning of the. We don't even know what's coming at us in terms of truth and fiction. We don't even know you're an author who's being held to account for facts. And now we have politicians who are not held to account for facts. It's so kind of ironic and ridiculous to think that you were burned at the stake for exaggeration and for fiction in a memoir, very little of it anyway. And that now we have. We've progressed beyond beyond even thinking that there is a fact.

[James Frey]

Even at the time, Dick Cheney was telling us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Man, I always use that example. And even in today, I'm doing a bunch of media for this book. I haven't talked. Talked to the media in America in 15 years, but I'm doing a bunch for this.

[David Duchovny]

I hope you don't think of me as the media.

[James Frey]

Oh, I don't. I think of you as like, hopefully, a new friend. I'm Having a cool conversation with. But like when you talk to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or Vanny Fair, yeah, they like fact check the out of you and that's fine. But I did say something to him. I'm like, I find it ironic that after 25 years you're still fact checking the out of me while you let politicians say whatever the they want. Art is held to a greater standard of truth than the leaders of our nation.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, well, if I had a mic to drop, I'd drop it. And it pisses me off. It's a bit of a magic trick what an author does, what an artist does. It's a magic trick. I, I once I wrote this script for the X Files and it came out and I was accused of plagiarism by somebody who had submitted a, an unsolicited script. Now the policy of all the writers, and I'm not even in the writers room where that thing might have come, is to not open any of that. That's just, that's just, that's just common sense. You just don't, you don't, that's not how scripts are submitted. So I was like, I know I didn't plagiarize it. So I'm like, hey, bring it on. Yeah, I'd love, let's talk about this. This is fun, you know. So the lawyers called me and they said, well, yeah, they've got a decent case. I was like, decent case? How the fuck can I have a decent case? Because I didn't plagiarize this. And they said, well, in their script, people come back from the dead. I was like, oh. I was like, okay, all right, so zombies, all right, and their script and your script, people come back from the dead. In their script and your script there's a Beatles reference.

[James Frey]

And in their script in history and.

[David Duchovny]

In their, and in their script, in your script, Mulder and Scully eat popcorn. And I was like, that's a decent case. And what I realized is the law, and in general, not just the law, but consciousness of, of non artistic consciousness, has no idea how to approach the concept of creation. So that you, they try and they try and backload it, you know, like how, how you, you got here by. Okay, popcorn, right? You got here by Beatles. And therefore. And they would ask me, how did you come up.

[James Frey]

You had to have read that to have thought of the Beatles and popcorn in a television show.

[David Duchovny]

So, but this is, but what I'm saying is like, these are, you know, good lawyers and this is, they're talking about plagiarism law and, and, and.

[James Frey]

If.

[David Duchovny]

You, if you extend that to consciousness of a public in general, there, there isn't a, a lawful way. And you're, we're talking with Oprah here about truth and fiction. There, there is, there's an inability to kind of comprehend the alchemy that goes on when you write and to, and to try to figure out what is truth and fiction and all that even in something that's a memoir. So to me it's a non starter kind of a controversy. I know that it was painful for you and, and life changing and, and a wonderful disaster as you're talking about it, but it's frustrating to me to, to, to have gone through. You know, obviously that was in private.

[James Frey]

I mean it was, it was frustrating for me, man. Like, part of it was fun and thrilling and, and certainly a lot of it was a nightmare. Like, I was married, I had a young child. Certainly my, my former wife and child didn't deserve to have to like, deal with all that.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[James Frey]

But in retrospect, like, I really do think of it as like it was the game I always wanted to play. It's just that you don't know what it's actually like until you play that game. Right. Like, yeah, professional athletes don't know what it's like to be in the NFL till some lights them up and, and I got lit up. And then from there I truly do think like anybody who makes something great or bold in their life, you're going to get lit up by somebody. So it's, how do you respond? How do you react to the failure, to the hurt, to the pain, to the obstacle, to whatever it is it's all about. Just can you keep going? Can you wake up every day and say, you know what? I don't give a fuck what anybody has to say.

[David Duchovny]

Well, what you're saying is too, it's a kind of a gut check back to well, what's my authentic inspiration here? You know, why. So you, you wanted, you wanted to, this is what you wanted. This is what you wanted and you've said that. But I have also seen where you've said that the book isn't self help, but you, but part of the book is to speak to addicts. Part of the book was to help addicts who are struggling. And that's a very, that's a very different motivation from, you know, both middle fingers up. So I, and I'm not saying that one is true and the other isn't. I can hold Both those thoughts at the same time as I think you can. But can you speak to that a little bit?

[James Frey]

The way I approached that was you read. And even still today, but especially back then, I've read tons of stuff about being a drug addict.

[David Duchovny]

Right.

[James Frey]

But I've never read anything that got to the real core of it. I never got to somebody saying, I'm going to bear my soul to you. I'm going to tell you my deepest, darkest secrets. I'm going to tell you all of the terrible things. Essentially like it's. It's what you do in AA as one of the steps. And I'm going to go there and make it as. Try to make it as painful and as terrifying and as brutal as it was for me, and then also show that there was a way out of it for me. You know, one of the reasons I did write the book, and I do think art can have motivations beyond the sake of purely making art.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[James Frey]

But was I knew a lot of drug addicts. The world was very different back in the 90s, especially the early 90s. If you went to rehab, you were fucked up. It was like going to prison. There were very few of them, only terrible, terribly fucked up people went. I went there and at least half of the people that I was in there with who had seen brutality. This was the age of crack, Right.

[David Duchovny]

Let's just say no. This is considered a moral failing on your part. If you're addicted to something, all of it, right.

[James Frey]

A moral failing, you're a bad. Like I said, it wasn't much different than going to prison. And at least half of the people I met in the facility I was in didn't believe in God or aa. And I understood that because it's hard to believe in God after you've seen and felt some of the things me or some of those people have have seen and felt. And so I wrote a book like you don't need God Again. If anything, it's more to the punk of it. You don't need fucking 12 rules. If you're. If you're going to submit your life to the 12 rules, good luck. They work for a lot of people, but they don't if they don't work for you. Here's how some crazy ass crackhead got out, right? By the strength of his will, by meditation, by Taoism, by willing to accept any pain that came my way and believe that I could get through it.

[David Duchovny]

Can you open up a little bit on the. What do you think it is in Daoism? Or stoicism, which I've seen you speak of as well, that got you through or that matured you or that enabled you to, you know, be sober.

[James Frey]

You know, for me, sobriety is a very simple thing. It doesn't mean it, it's easy, simple. And whether something is hard or not. And for me, it was, okay, the simplest resolution here is stop. So then once you figure out that, which is pretty obvious, how to stop. And I do feel like I gave the steps and some traditional method of God, some reasonable chance. But just like a song or a work of art, not everything always connects with your soul. Right? And that didn't. And I remember my brother brought me a copy of the Dao, translated by Stephen Mitchell, and I read it.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, I know that one. Yeah.

[James Frey]

And the translated title of the book is the Art of the Way. The Art of the Way of Life. How to Get Through Life as Peacefully and as peacefully as Possible. And it was the first thing I had ever read of any kind of religious or philosophical document that just made sense. Like, live simply. Simple in thought, simple in action. Have patience with yourselves. Have patience with others. Have compassion for yourselves. Have compassion for others. Those are the fundamental tenets of Taoism. To accept that I'm in trouble. To accept that I feel pain. To accept that whatever life throws at me, I can, I can take it and I, I, I can just let it go. Right. A lot of the Taoist things and the sort of AA and recovery things do match up a lot. Letting things go.

[David Duchovny]

Yes.

[James Frey]

Accepting the world as, as it is. Accepting responsibility for yourself in the world and for your own actions in the world. I mean, you could say Taoism is my AA God, but it's just a sort of a slightly different system. And meditation brings me peace every day, and that peace allows me to get through the rest of the day. And it's really as simple as that.

[David Duchovny]

Well, it also seems to me, like when you describe your process of writing, that you've managed to find a balance in your life where, you know, if you're meditating and you're contemplating the Dao, the way, then you go into your workroom, and then you, you stimulate those other, the, the parts that used to drive you to drugs, and you channel that. You channel them into the work or, you know, it's, it's, if you're even.

[James Frey]

That is a reflection of Taoism. The black and the white balancing each other out. The good and the bad balancing each other out. Accepting that we have both of them within us. I accept that. I can be a brutal person, not good, not kind, not gentle, that there are things in me that aren't cool. I can also accept that I can be an exceptionally good human being, kind, generous, loving, helpful in whatever way I can be and like to me, finding that center space where I accept both of those things and in some way I honor both of those of those things and I allow both of those things to exist within me is the best way for me.

[David Duchovny]

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[James Frey]

I help a lot of people. For sure. Yeah. I don't formally teach.

[David Duchovny]

No, you don't. Because I was, I was, I was curious as to how someone who admittedly breaks rules. Teaches rules. How do you. How do you teach? How do you teach a writer?

[James Frey]

I don't really teach rules. I teach people to be true to what they feel inside themselves. Right. If somebody's most perfect and most authentic means of expression is with absolutely precise grammar. Great. What I tell people is learn to manage your fear. The thing that stops most people from being great at anything is fear of failure.

[David Duchovny]

Shame. Shame around that.

[James Frey]

Shame. Fear of failure. Right. And then it's just do your work right. One word after another, one word after another. If you focus on the next word. And that's it, everything's good. And I try to teach people to be.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[James Frey]

That we all have our own way of thinking and feeling and speaking and living. And art should be someone's most. The perfect expression of someone's inner self. And I just teach people to do that. A lot of it is discipline. A lot of it is like the. You can go to school and they'll teach you grammar, but they can't teach you how to sit in a fucking chair every day for a year and stare at an empty screen and go back every day with some sort of fundamental faith that you can do what you want to do. That's what I teach people how to do. I don't teach them how to write. I don't tell them how to write. I don't tell them the stories to tell. I tell them how to approach things in a way that will help them actually probably achieve what they want as opposed to just thinking about achieving what they want.

[David Duchovny]

So it's a discipline. The discipline is a discipline.

[James Frey]

I mean, I help a lot of people sort of very discreetly with cancellation and with addiction. I can't tell you how many calls I get still all the time from people who are either having drug problems or someone they love or when people go through cancellation, like, what do I do now? And I don't pretend to be an expert, but I can tell them what worked for me. But I like helping people. I think it's important. There were people who helped me on my way up. I think it's good to be kind in the world. I think it's good to make it a better place if you can. And it's talking to somebody for 10 minutes a couple times a week helps them out. I'm down.

[David Duchovny]

Let's talk about the new book Next to Heaven. I see a thread from the dao and pre psychological texts to you. And I see. Now that I know about your. The way you create, you know, I see you kind of trying to circumvent the interpretation of the feeling and just get the feeling down. And when I look at your. When I look at the way your prose sits on a page, it looks screenplay, more screenplay like, than novelistic. So it tends towards more of a dialogue feeling prose than a descriptive or flowery or interior monologue prose. And I'm wondering if anything I'm saying is making any sense to you in terms of your style or in this book particularly.

[James Frey]

It does make sense. Like again, when I was teaching myself how to write, there were a lot of things I was thinking about, right. I was thinking about, okay, you have to write in a way that's not like anyone else. That doesn't look like it, feel like it, sound like it, read like it, right. So I started playing with, with a lot of these tricks and again, as you were talking about sort of pre Freudian versus Daoism. Daoism at its core seeks simplicity and seeks directness and seeks clarity. Right. Simple, clear and direct in thought and action and life. And I went that way and I still do for my writing, simp clear and direct. I'm going to tell you what's happening. I'm going to tell you where it's happening, how it's happening, what it looks like, smells like, sounds like and most important, what it feels like. Right. And I'm going to, I'm going to try to be as simple and clear and direct as I can in doing that.

[David Duchovny]

It sounds to me like what you're going for or instinctually what you were going for is a more unmediated way of communicating. It sounds like, sounds like you are feeling like grammar's getting in the way of just the brute instinct of what I want to say.

[James Frey]

That was a beautiful way to put it that I've never heard said, but yes, it was. Can you write a book the way the Sex Pistols wrote God Save the Queen? Can you write a book that makes you feel the way you feel when you look at a Jackson Pollock painting? Can you write a book that has the power that thundering guitars and bass do? Can you write a book that does what I said, what I wanted to do, which is shatter all these rules and utterly ignore them and defy them and still have it be a readable document, document an entertaining document, a moving document, a valid work of literary art. And, and those were things I thought about for years and, and, and struggled with. I wrote three books that two of them I threw in the sin, literally in the 90s, like printed out books that I wrote that I read and they were so bad.

[David Duchovny]

That hurts me. That hurts me. I hate throwing shit away. I'm always like, I can repurpose this, this somehow. Somehow.

[James Frey]

No, there was, there was no repurposing any of it. I actually have the notebooks.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[James Frey]

That I used to write those books still. So I have the, the core material. My, my kid was looking, my 18 year old son was looking through them and he was like, dad, you're you, you seems like, you had kind of a cool life, and you were kind of a idiot. And I was like, yeah, yeah, you.

[David Duchovny]

Know what you were saying? I have two thoughts. One is, it sounds to me like I'm surprised that you didn't go to poetry, because that's where you can kind of rewrite your own rules of grammar. Aside from the fact that, you know, nobody reads it, you might have had a thought of, like, I would like an audience. And secondly, what you were saying reminds me of this possibly apocryphal story I've heard about Christopher Walken, who is somebody whose cadence everybody imitates. And what I've been told is as soon as he gets his script, he takes out all punctuation from his dialogue so that he finds his way to the meaning without, you know, as. As you were saying, without these kinds of marks that people that have come before have said, I need to put in here to make it legible and understandable.

[James Frey]

That's. That's really interesting about Walken, because one of the things I said is, like, my goal is to communicate what I feel in my soul is clearly and as precisely as possible. And one of the reasons I originally rejected grammar is because it didn't mimic speech, right? That as I write, I say everything out loud. And it's much more important to me how it feels, the rhythm of it, the sound of it. So before I write anything, I always say it it out loud. And that's how I arrived at how I use grammar, having no quotation marks. Like, when you and I speak to each other, I don't say. I say, David, yes, right, right. I just fucking talk. Part of the way the books look and the way the books are written is you talk about poetry or. One of the things I do think I have done as a writer is demolish the ideas of these genres, right? I don't write fiction. I don't write nonfiction. I both write poetry and don't write poetry. If you look at how those books are laid out, there's pages of one or two words, a line, just strings of words designed to make you think and feel things. That is much more closer. But when I think about the book, it's. What's the story I want to tell you? What do I want people to feel? I've written lots of serious books about drugs, about love. I wrote a book called the Final Testament of the Holy Bible about the second coming of Christ. This book, I just wanted to let it rip and have fun. We're living in this world that's Utter madness. And during the pandemic, somebody had asked me to read Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. I was. I was gonna say, you know, I feel like somebody must have already bought. Is wanting to adapt this because it feels like. It feels like it slots really well into kind of, you know, the White Lotus crowd before they go on vacation. You know, this is them in their actual home. And it's also. It's also in the Nicole Kidman baby girl kind of area where the women are ultimately using sex in this world to win.

[James Frey]

As a weapon.

[David Duchovny]

As a weapon. Yeah.

[James Frey]

No, I read Jackie Collins. Somebody wanted me to adapt it. A new version of Hollywood Wives, and I wanted to do a much rowdier version of. Of, of it than they did. But after I read it, I was like, that was great. And.

[David Duchovny]

And I was like, the book Hollywood Wives was great. Yeah, it was.

[James Frey]

Have you ever read it?

[David Duchovny]

No, I haven't.

[James Frey]

It's awesome. Dude. You should totally read it. You'll love it. So then I read Hollywood Husbands, right? I read a couple Danielle Steele books.

[David Duchovny]

Really?

[James Frey]

They're all great people. People kind of make fun of them, but they're great for what they are. They're spectacular. And I was like, what would a book like that look like if I wrote it? What would a book look like in the. In the age we live in? And I. I live and have long lived in, in the wealthiest town in the country. This secretive, incredibly discreet, highly protected bubble of New Canaan, Connecticut. And it is a beautiful place to live, and it is an interesting and weird place to live. And whenever I write a book up, I always say, all my job really is to do is hold a mirror up society and show you what you look like as we were talking about sort of doing that to ourselves earlier. Right. And so I held up a mirror to the community I live in, which is absurdly wealthy, absurdly privileged. All kinds of weird, crazy, dumb shit happens here, and it mostly makes me laugh. And so I wanted to write a fun, dirty, kind of satirical book about fucking rich people.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. Do you want to? I mean, the inciting event here is an orgy with, I believe, engraved invitations is only, I imagine, New Canaan, Connecticut would do.

[James Frey]

Yeah. So New Canaan has a history of this kind of stuff.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, does it already?

[James Frey]

Was. Yeah. The Key Party was invented here. The Stepford Wives was set here. The. What was that? Swingers. Mo Tobey Maguire, Swingers. The Ice Storm was also set here.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[James Frey]

There is a history of this type of activity, and. And I started thinking about it and, and. And what would it be like? And why would somebody do it? And in the sort of absurdity of the setting, how would things happen? And, yeah, it's a dirty, funny, sharp murder mystery about a swinger's party at a billionaire's house.

[David Duchovny]

But what I think is formidable about the plot in this case is, as I said in the earlier, is that, you know, men think that they're. That they're running the sex game, but.

[James Frey]

Right.

[David Duchovny]

But no, that.

[James Frey]

That. That for sure. Anybody who's been married knows the men aren't in charge of anything. Right. Anybody who's on a movie set run by a woman knows men aren't in charge of anything. And I do see sex increase. Increasingly used as a weapon. I think. I think it probably always has. But like in today's world, with sexual politics being as complicated as they are, relationship politics being as complicated as they are, fucking identity politics being as complicated as they are, that people are able to use sex as a weapon in ways that. That they haven't before. You know, I think sometimes about me too, and I certainly don't support anybody who abused anybody in any way. But it wasn't only. I've worked in Hollywood for 30 years, man. I've had more women hit on me than men have hit on me. And those kinds of things work everywhere. And frankly, women are just. Just as guilty as of those types of situations.

[David Duchovny]

You're stepping right into a defiant position again, which is where you're comfortable, you know, Are you expecting. Are you expecting to be attacked in a way, for, for this?

[James Frey]

I'm always attacked, man. I'm always attacked for something. But I'm just saying, like, sex is a weapon that both men and women use. Right? And. And we like to think often that men are. Are these terrible, aggressive monsters, and women are demure and helpless and can do nothing in the face of this monstrosity. But the reality is sexual politics are very, very complicated, and sex is used as a weapon by both men and women. And I see in these communities, these very wealthy communities that I have lived in for large portions of my life, the men are off working and the women sort of. Of very much run things. And. And again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's just how it is. And, and I wanted to tell that story. And I think a lot of the women marry men and then they realize, holy, this guy's a monster. But you can't get out of it, right? You're in a golden prison of some kind. And I want to have fun. The book was fun to write.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. What I, what I do, I probably.

[James Frey]

Just got myself in huge amounts of trouble.

[David Duchovny]

Trouble. Well, are you concerned, are you concerned of where you eat? Are you concerned when the book comes out that you're, that your idyllic existence, quiet existence there is going to get complicated?

[James Frey]

No. I live in a black house at the end of the road in the end of a dead end road in the woods. Right. Somebody's, somebody's coming. I know, but I mean, I've taught. There's a lot of gossip around the, the town right now about me and the book and I'm just, I, I, I'll just go about my business the same way I always have. Right. I'll be the best dad I can. I'll be the best friend I can. I'll be the best co worker I can. I'll be the best writer I can.

[David Duchovny]

It doesn't, it doesn't sound to me like it's, it's a Truman Capote situation where you, your book sounds very fictionalized to me. It's not where you. Yeah, I don't give away actual secrets.

[James Frey]

No. I don't generally use books to settle scores. Right, right. I may in the future. Actually, though, I've been thinking about it. I have a couple scores I wouldn't mind settling.

[David Duchovny]

But.

[James Frey]

Yeah, no, like I, none of the characters are based on real people, but the book is very much based in reality. I, I think like a lot of my books, half the people in this town are going to read it and say, he's a piece of, Piece of, and this is a desecration of our beautiful town. And I think half the people are going to read the book and be like, thank God somebody was willing to say it.

[David Duchovny]

Well, that's, that's, that's the position that you like. You like to be half loved and half hated.

[James Frey]

Yeah. I always tell people that's how I know when I'm going to quit. I'm going to quit writing books when I'm either universally loved or universally hated because I will know I have failed. But until I am, I'm going to keep going.

[David Duchovny]

Absolutely. The last quote that I wanted to run by is from your book, the Final Testament of the Holy Bible. And you write, the trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live. I feel like that's bleaker than your actual thoughts because I, you know, obviously what you went through is traumatizing, but maybe because you were an adult It's. It's more survival. And you weren't a child. I don't know.

[James Frey]

I mean, I will say the Bible was written after I had had a child die. I had a son who died of a disease called spinal muscular atrophy, which is like childhood als.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[James Frey]

Yeah. So I was coming off all what people think about as the trauma of Oprah, and then my son died. Right. And again, that was sort of a reframing moment, you know, where you think, oh, yeah, everybody thinks that this experience you've had is so tough or so traumatic, and then you live out a very legitimately tough, traumatic moment in private. And more than any book, the Bible is. The Bible is an expression of human pain. The Bible is a book that I wrote to keep myself alive. It was, all right, kill yourself, get drunk, or write a really, really hard book. And I wrote the book. But I do think that that statement is maybe not necessarily true to my life and my experience, but true to a lot of people. I think so many people in their lives get or experience trauma that annihilates them. They never recover from it. They never are willing to allow themselves to recover from it. And if my life or my career or this conversation is about anything, it's that you can recover. You can recover. I've recovered from addiction. I've recovered from a girlfriend dying, a best friend dying, a child dying. I've recovered from public controversies, humiliations, embarrassments, situations, whatever you want to call them. Because I get up every day and I say, you can keep going, man. You're not done yet. You choose the conditions of your life. I wish everybody did that. And if you learn anything from me, it's that you should. Right. Keep going.

[David Duchovny]

Thank you, James.

[James Frey]

Thank you, David. This was a pleasure.

[David Duchovny]

And.

[James Frey]

And it's a real honor to be here. It sounds corny. I've been a fan of yours for.

[David Duchovny]

A lot.

[James Frey]

35 years.

[David Duchovny]

It. It does sound corny, but I'll never get tired of hearing it. Some post. James Fry thoughts. And to go back to something that I. I don't think I said when we were talking about the Oprah business, her calling him out for, quote, unquote, lying in a memoir. The history of the novel is very much involved in that discussion. I haven't. I haven't gone back to figure this out or to research it, but I do remember when you're talking about the earliest novels from the 18th century, part of the appeal, part of the commercial outreach was, these are true stories of the middle class. Of the lower class. Before this epic poetry, before the novel, only great personages were the subject of literature, epic poems. So the novel was really a democratizing art form. Probably there was no democratizing art form as consequential as that until television, the 1950s, where the subject of our art became real people. That was the idea. And I think in many of the early books, even though they were fictive or fiction, they were sold as real stories. That was the titillating aspect of it. And interestingly, James went through that too. You know, it's a version of the truth, it's not the truth. Anyway, that's a little professorial here. Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven't yet, now is a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You'll get bonus content like my thoughts on conversations with guests including Alec Baldwin and Rob Lowe. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or for all other podcast apps, head to lemonade premium.com to subscribe. That's lemonadapremium.com Failbetter 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. Our VP of New content is Rachel Neal. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kupinsky and Brad Davidson. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittles Wax, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowland 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.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

On August 9, 2014, a police officer.

[James Frey]

Shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

Missouri, setting off 400 days of uprising.

[James Frey]

That's what the world saw.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

What they didn't see was the family.

[James Frey]

The grief, and the young man behind the headline Minds now His mother, Leslie McSpadden, tells her story of love, loss.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

And the fight for justice.

[James Frey]

I'm still Mike's Mom. Once you're a mother, you never forget how to Mother from lemonada Media and.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

Campaign Zero Still My Baby is coming out May 27th.