Pop Culture Confidential

Episode 17: From Friday Night Lights to Cailtin Jenner - Buzz Bissinger

Twenty-five years ago Buzz Bissinger went in search of the Friday night lights – to chronicle the high school football ritual that can bring together a small American town. The result of this journey that took him to Odessa, Texas became the New York Times bestseller “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream”, a book that would later be adapted into both a movie and TV show of the same name. The book shows America’s love of football while exposing its racism and greed, which is just as prevalent today but often overlooked. Since then Bissinger has not shied away from controversial subjects, including his own life. He has written about his struggle as a shopaholic which has included spending over $500,000 on high-fashion clothing in just two years, as well as his love of wearing women’s clothing. In his very touching book “Father’s Day: Across America with an Unusual Dad and His Extraordinary Son” he explores his relationship with his son Zach, who is savant challenged by serious intellectual deficits, as they take a road trip across the U.S.. As a contributor for Vanity Fair he has written very revealing profiles - of the disgraced journalist Stephen Glass, post scandal Tiger Woods, Oscar nominated Bradley Cooper and maybe his most memorable - Caitlyn Jenner in which he chronicles “the fears and doubts, love and courage, and tensions and traumas involved in the transition”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duration:: 38m
Broadcast on:: 29 Oct 2015
Audio Format:: other

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hi I'm Kristina Yarlink-Biro, thanks for listening. Before Friday Night Lights was a critically acclaimed movie and TV series, it wasn't still as a best selling book by journalist Buzz Bissinger. Friday Night Lights, a town, a team and a dream was published in 1990, and now in its 25th anniversary, it's still one of the most seminal American sports books. The book follows the Permian High School Panthers football team from Odessa, Texas, as they made a run towards the Texas State Championship. Not only is it about football, but American society, small town life, racism, classism, success and tragedy. Buzz Bissinger writes for countless magazines, including Vanity Fair, and has written several acclaimed books, for example a prayer for the city about the political scene in Philadelphia and shooting star about basketball superstar LeBron James. He is one of a sophisticated breed of journalists that brings out a bigger narrative, like American community seen through the love of sports and bigger threads in popular culture. And with Buzz Bissinger, the narrative has often been about himself, by choice or necessity. In 2012 he published Father's Day, it's a memoir that revolves around a cross country trip he took with his son Zack, now in his 30s. Zack suffered brain damage at birth. It's an extremely personal book about Bissinger's own fears as a father, but also what a gift Zack has been in his life. And Bissinger has also had periods of great personal struggle. In 2012 he published an article in GQ detailing his shopping addiction to men and women's clothing, which he wears both. And then a personal breakdown and subsequent rehab would take many years of mending. This year Buzz Bissinger wrote what may have been one of the most anticipated and read magazine articles, namely the Vanity Fair Caitlyn Jenner profile, Call Me Caitlyn. Buzz Bissinger had complete access to the former Olympian and her family during her transition to transgender women. Mr. Bissinger, thank you so much for joining me and congratulations to the 25th anniversary edition of Friday Night Lights. Well, thank you. It's hard to believe it's been 25 years, if nothing else, I'm a lot older. And it's still so relevant in so many ways, so congratulations. Thank you. I wanted to start off by asking that many countries have certain sports culturally ingrained here in Europe, Spain with soccer, or football as we'd call it here, but in America, it's just football is so American. What makes it so important to American culture, would you say? Well, America obviously is a big country. There are lots and lots of small towns in America. And I think football, very early on, high school football became the glue that held these towns together gave people in an isolated community something to look forward to on a Friday night. And I also think football represents machoism, it represents individuality, and frankly, it represents violence, which are all very a part of the American canvas, whether we want to admit it or not. You had won a Pulitzer Prize at this point in your life, and when you got the idea that you wanted to see American life through football, and you went looking for a city and you found Odessa, what was it like to move your family there? Well, it was actually about 30 years ago. It was exciting, because I'm a reporter, and reporters like being in new places, different places where everything is blank, where you know nothing, so everything's very, very exciting. So it was stimulating. It was open-ended because I was writing this book, I got access, but I didn't know how it would turn out. If they had a disaster season or nothing happened, I would have been screwed. But there was a real stimulation to it. I had grown up in privilege in the East Coast, in New York City, and I always didn't want it to live in the middle of nowhere in Texas, so I guess this was the culmination of a lot of different things. And what was it about Odessa, because you looked at many different cities, correct? If you're going to do this book, you have to do it in Texas, high school football, it's synonymous with Texas. And Odessa, the setting was right, it's in West Texas, it's pretty much 300 miles from everywhere, and they also had an incredible football team that had a good chance of making the run all the way to state, as we call it, and that would be very important to the narrative. Plus, I saw the stadium, which had seating, you know, this is high school, this is American high school, it's sitting for 19,000 people, and when I saw that, I said, "I got to get a piece of that." How could you feel the city's love of the sport? Well, as I said, I mean, through the football stadium, it was the only bond issue that the county ever passed at that point. The stadium was built in 1985, three years before I got there, you know, this was at the cost of about $5.6 million. There had been nothing like it in the country, nothing that big, that beautiful artificial surface feel, so that obviously was one indication. I knew about the history, the team I wrote about Permian, then as I was there, you know, they would go to a certain away game by charter jet. You know, these are 16, 17, 18-year-old kids, you know, find away games on a charter jet. I mean, that's the kind of thing the professional soccer teams do, and then the misplaced academic priorities. More money spent on athletic tape than on new books for the English department. It just was out of whack, and it became clear to me that football was the center of the wheel. Everything emanated from this thing called high school football. It really dominated virtually every facet of town life one way or another. And one of the things you write is that was the ugliest racism you've ever seen. What would you describe that? You know, unfortunately, racism is alive and well everywhere all over the world. In this case, though, the open use of the N-word, I don't like to repeat it, but was all over the place. I mean, you know, it was set in front of me. It was set at city council meetings. It was set during interviews as if nothing was wrong with it, as if this is the way you refer to certain blacks as ends, and then I'd never seen anything like it. It's the blatantness of it, and then the way I wrote a bit of black running back, Booby Miles, who's kind of the mainstay of the book, and he got hurt before the season very tragically. And then the racial scorn he'd gone him, you know, an assistant coach referred to him as a big dumb old nigger. I don't know how else to put it. I hate saying it, but that's what he said, and that was absolutely shocking to me. And we'll always be shocking to me. And you basically say that they drove Booby like a football animal? Well, yes, I mean, unfortunately, I don't know what it's like over there. But I think United States is unique in civilization anywhere in the world in which we look to high schools and colleges for our sports entertainment, not just the pros. And there are a lot of kids in high school, American high schools, like Booby Miles, they're valued only for the ability to play sports, whether it's football or basketball, adults believe they have no use beyond that. They're not worth being educated. And as long as they can play football, everything is great. But you know, the case of Booby, which is the case of thousands of kids, he got hurt. And when he tried to come back, someone was better. And then they had no use for him anymore. He was passing all his courses with flying colors when he was playing football. And then when he stopped playing, he was flunking because they didn't care. They just saw him as a football animal. I don't know how else to say it. What's happened to him since? Well, you know, when you have no education, when you never know how to overcome adversity, when you're praised all your life for your football skills and then it all comes crashing down, you're not going to have a good life. I mean, Booby was robbed of his dream of playing a senior year in high school in Texas. He was arguably the best running back in the state of Texas. And that's saying a lot. So I knew even before the book came out that he was going to have a very hard road ahead of him, his uncle, who was the one person who Booby knew loved him, died in 1998. And then it was over. So when I saw him, it's in a new afterword for the 25th anniversary edition, I interviewed him in prison, which was awful. I've kept in touch with him for a long time, but I have to be honest, just seeing how his life was going, I simply was not surprised. What is he in jail for? He violated his probation. So he's serving a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault, and it's due for the eligibility of parole in 2017, and that's not so easy to get in the state of Texas. So he could be there conceivably until 2022. It's unclear, but it's a serious sentence. And he's doing OK. He keeps to himself. He gained a lot of weight. He was 420 pounds when he went in. He's now down to about 360. So he looks good. And I think it's causing him to really think about his life. But he thought about his life before it. He says the right things. I mean, my fear is, if he goes the distance of a sentence, he's going to be close to 50 or over 50 when he gets out, and that's very hard in American society to be a convicted felon over the age of 50, trying to restart your life. I understand you helped him a lot through the years. I did. I mean, over the years, I tried to get him back on his feet. It wasn't done because to make me look good, it was done because I felt he needed help. He had been a big part of the book. I knew he was having financial problems. And I wanted to see if I could do it in a practical way, you know, sending him to a trade school or getting him a car so he could go to work and then just, you know, giving him money because he had to live. And he had kids. And really, it didn't work. I mean, it's very hard for anyone, including me. You know, I get paid in lump sums. And I pretty much spend it the first day. And let's say, where the hell did it go? And that was true of Booby. I did try to, try to help him until I realized that he just didn't have the discipline to know what to do with that money, which, which I understand. The thing with Booby is someone had to be there all the time and I couldn't be that person. In many ways, he is a surrogate son to me and I love him and worry about him. But you know, I also have three children, three children of my own. You've gone back to Odessa for, for this 25 edition. And what's the town like today? And what did, how do they feel about you in the book? You know, I think they've forgotten about me if they try to forget about me. You know, when the movie came out and the movie was terrific, but the movie was sort of one side. The movie was all about the pressure that these kids faced, the intensity. It was beautifully, beautifully done, but it did delve into the real hardcore themes of the book, white racism, white gender inferiority, white misplaced academic priorities. So people in Odessa were very relieved by the film and they felt, all right, the films come out. Everyone likes films much better than books. So we don't really have to care about the book anymore. I've treated very nicely. I don't know if they're really happy to see me when I get back into town. And the town has changed a lot. It's grown a lot. It's bigger. And it certainly is more cosmopolitan than it was when I was there. There were things in your book that people hadn't realized about sports and that really came to light. Has anything changed in football culture, do you think? Yeah, I actually think a lot has changed and it's gotten much worse, actually. Oh, no. I know people hailed front and back like says, as a cautionary tale, but you're dealing with a culture that's entrenched in American life. You're also dealing with a culture that is a huge, huge money maker of the 25 biggest rated television shows in America over the past several years, 24 have been pro football games. It's everywhere on television. You're talking about it, between college and pro is you're talking about a billions upon billions dollar industry. And when there's that kind of money involved, it only intensifies. And I find our obsession with sports and the academic levels to be worse than ever. It was a team in Texas, a town that built a high school football stadium that cost $60 million. There's another town, a very good program that's building a stadium for another $60 million. So it's very, very much alive and well. And there's some of these high school football teams, not all of them, at a small percentage, but some of them really are based on semi-pro teams. They travel all over the country to play games. They have the best in equipment, the best in training. And I don't think that was the intended purpose of sports when it was brought to the high school level. But that's what it's become. It's all about winning and it's all about insane, misguided parents who really do think that their kids are going to make it to the pros, whether it's women or men. And that's insane. That's insane. And a recent poll has showed in America, 25% of parents think their kids have a shot of the pros. Well, the percentage is probably 0.008%. But parents have this dream and they push their kids and they're very demanding and all they really care about is have Johnny and Judy does in sports. And I think it's one of the reasons that many will agree. American high schools are kind of a joke for many when it comes to academics. They're not pushed and high school in many ways is kind of a party with academics shoved to the side. Reading and researching about you is struck by how honest you are about periods of great insecurity and self doubt, even though from my point of view, you've written some incredibly seminal books and where do you think this comes from? It probably comes from being growing up on the Upper West Side, a Jewish where you have very pushy parents. I don't know. Obviously, it emanates from your childhood for whatever reason. You feel insecure. You know, I never felt quite settled with my mother. She went to work in the 1950s, which was unheard of really, and work was what she cared about. So I never knew to what degree she really even wanted kids, frankly, I'm not sure if she did. So there was a real distance to her and that breeds insecurity and then it kind of, you know, multiplies, it kind of feeds on itself, in my case, you know, really went to kind of all purpose, I was saying all purpose breakdown about four or five years ago, which I went into, had to go into inpatient rehab, which I really had to go into. Is that in connection with the article in GQ in 2012? Yeah. I mean, the article in GQ was, it was an interesting story to say the least. It was about a severe shopping addiction, which still does rare itself up. I spent, I don't know, I mean, over $500,000 on clothing, most of it leather, some of it women's, which I have no problem with, but it was crazy. It was a compulsive buying, but that was the tip of the iceberg I was doing. And I was brutalizing myself. I was very, very self-destructive and mutilating myself to be frank and my life was completely out of sync. I didn't really care about anything, I was, you know, dabbling in Percocet and trying to sort of run away from life and extremely confused and depressed. So because of all these factors, I just felt I had to, I had to get intensive help. And you wrote this article, you didn't tell your family about it beforehand, which is- My wife read it, at least read it, but my kids did not and they were traumatized. They were traumatized. My youngest son was traumatized. I mean, he was going to a Kenyan college in the United States and Ohio terrific school. And classmates came up to him and said, "Hi, what's with your father? It's all over the news. It's not on the Today Show. Everyone's talking about it. What the hell did he write?" And he said, "I have no idea. I don't know what you're talking about." And it took a year for us to repair that damage and I made a mistake. I also think in some horrible way, I was maybe trying to destroy the West important length that I had, which was to my kids, who I love madly and they love me. I had already tried to destroy my way to my wonderful wife. And this was, you know, when you're on a self-destructive bent, this is what you do. So I think that's why I probably didn't show it to them. I didn't show it to my uncle and aunt. I didn't show it to my sister. So these are people who are very close to me and they all were shocked. Now, either advantage, I was in rehab where you can't get any phone calls or read any newspapers. I didn't know what was happening, which was good. And what saved you and how are you doing today? Well, I mean, I think what saved me is rehab is intense. There's a lot of therapy. There's trying to go to the source of what was going on with me, which was both a breakdown and certainly aspects of a certain type of sexual addiction. I think we got to the root of the problem in terms of my growing up. I also think that a bit by bit, I began to realize, you know, the value of myself and the value of my wife and also the perspective of work. Work had dominated my life. I defined myself like many do simply by my work, simply by achievement. But the problem with that is that once that achievement is over, it's an insatiable beast. You want another achievement, another achievement. And I feel now that I work, I like to work, but I have it in a certain perspective. So I feel like much better. I do a fall down, so to speak, and still go on shopping jags when I'm feeling manic and had a recent one, which I'm not proud of, although I do love clothing. And you know, everyone says, well, you're gender bending or you're just like a woman, I don't really know what that means. And I don't really care. I mean, I think it's simply an expression of who you are. So I'm not perfect, but I think in general, my sense of self and my ability to communicate with people I love is frankly, a lot better. I'm happier. I'm happier in terms of myself. Well, besides the male or female aspect, I don't know, but what's the thing about high fashion for you? I mean... I love it. I mean, I love it. I like this. Is it like art? Is it like art? Is it just you see it? I like looking great. I mean, I just get a certain feel. They're probably, you know, because I do talk about it openly. I think it's called autogenophilia, it's men do like wearing women's clothing. They feel a sexual charge, which I do. And I also think it's more beautiful. You know, Europe is different, but I hate the way men dress in the United States. Like slobs. They purposely look like slobs. And you know, I adopt kind of a rocker look and like letting it out there and, you know, pull it off. And it just makes me feel a certain wonderful way. So I love all my clothes. Do you like fashion and I mean, even I don't mean just dressing in stuff that makes you look great. I mean, do you look at fashion magazines, do you enjoy the time you know, was the New York Fashion Show, was the Paris Fashion Show? And I want to see what the trends are. I want to think what's not, you know, I want to get ideas, but then I have to be careful because that'll been shot. But I do. I love fashion. I love the creativity. I love to see what different people are wearing, you know, men and women. I want to talk about another book you wrote called Father's Day, which is also a very personal book about your son, Zach, tell me a little bit about the genesis of writing that book. Well, Zach was, Zach is a twin, his brother Jerry and he were twins, but they had a very traumatic birth. They were born in 1983, 13 and a half weeks prematurely. So they weighed Jerry weighed one pound, 14 ounces. He was the first one out, Zach weighed one pound, 11. He was in intensive care for seven months and did have some, I described his trace brain damage at birth. So there's a tremendous difference. Jerry is now an elementary school principal and he's doing wonderfully in his life. He just got married. He went to college. He got a master's in education. Those are all things that I just don't think Zach will ever do and the genesis of the book and the purpose was to sort of rediscover him because, you know, parents don't like to admit this, but we all have, we live through our kids. We all have dreams for our kids. And I felt to a certain degree I was, I was robbed of that was Zach and because I saw it that way, all about achievement, I didn't realize how exceptional he is, although that trip started it. And I have to say he is absolutely exceptional. I mean, he walks, he talks, he's now living by himself four days a week. So there's a lot of trouble with comprehension, but he thrives on independence and I used this line. It was the great and departed. Oliver Sac said this at one point, he said, "Within all of us, whenever impairment they have or don't have, within all of us resides the need to be whole." And Zach is an inspirational living proof of that. What kind of a father were you before the trip? Well, I was a good father. I was always a loving father. But there were moments where I would get frustrated with Zach and probably feel sorry for myself and say, "Why is this child different?" So it wasn't a matter of, I love Zach Madley, but it was a matter of trying to communicate with him. And I got to tell you, I mean, we took a cross-country trip and I thought Zach would be the one who would be confused or bored or just not even want to do it. And Zach was the one who constantly kind of pulled me down from the ceiling when I got very frustrated. Zach is a savant, so he pretty much can recall every birthday and every important date with him the span of his lifetime. I don't, no one knows how he does it. But he was, you know, we went to Milwaukee, he had not been there in 20 years and we want to go to this restaurant. He knew exactly how to get there. He knew the route. I was looking at the map, I was getting really pissed off and Zach kind of constantly was calming me down and it was an aspect of him that I didn't really know before. I noticed that Zach on that trip, he has tremendous intuitive empathy for other people, you know, including his father and our relationship now is, you know, never, never been better. He was an apartment that we have in Philadelphia. I go back and forth between Philadelphia and Washington State, but when I come back, we're like roomies. You know, like, I guess it's like the odd couple, but we have a wonderful time to get. So the book and the writing about your story with him, it helped somehow. Yeah, it did help and it didn't do particularly well commercially and that was, that was hard. You know, we write books, we want people to read them. And when they don't, you feel a tremendous sense of rejection that they didn't like what you wrote and there were high hopes for it and those weren't met. The critique of the book was very good. So most people liked it, you know, some did not and that's the way it rolls. I don't read reviews anymore. You know, I felt it would sell and that to me is sort of the ultimate test and I've had great success in the past and it didn't. But you're right. I should have been, that was my problem in life. Yeah, I never appreciated the good stuff. I only looked at the bad stuff. Yeah, because you're saying you don't read reviews anymore. I remember an article by David Carr about your, you, you on Twitter that you had a period where you were very, um, through, yes, and that was a period of myself that I hated. So I'm off Twitter. I used to be a Twitter binger or tweet binger and, you know, tweet as many as 60 messages in an hour. Just go, you know, wild and people loved it and like attracted, you know, 30,000 followers. But realized I was doing because I was very nasty and named people and made fun of people and was cruel to people who I liked and destroyed relationships. And it showed a side of me that was, that was coarse and bombastic and really hateful that was not me and we had made me realize, you know, get off, get out of it. And so I have like canceled my account and have not been on since. Is that the, was that an easy thing to do to sort of stay out of the limelight? Yeah. My wife helped the watch. She said, you're just not the person that I knew when I first met you, what's, what's happening? You become, as I say, you know, bombastic endlessly opinionated. No one can talk to you without you trying to shove your opinion down their, their mouths and that, that resonated with me and, and Twitter was one of the ways in which I was continuing that really nasty, cruel personality. And so it was very easy to, to let it go. You're basically describing Twitter in general. I mean, it's a mean, nasty place if you ask me to, you know, I mean, the problem with our culture and this is a generalization, but our culture, particularly in terms of Twitter in terms of writing, in terms of the internet is based on snark. Really? Yeah. Sloppiness. Simply saying something for the sake of making noise. This is a noise culture. And I realized with Twitter, you know, if you just do it as an author, you get about six followers because no one cares. But if you're an angry man and you're making fun of people, in a way that people think is clever and cruel, that's, that's the way to get ahead. And I just didn't want to contribute to, to that anymore. So in an interview I read, you said you may never top Friday nightlife, but I think you may have with the Caitlin Jenner piece, which really was a, will be remembered and iconic piece. How did you get this piece? Did you know Caitlin or Bruce? I mean, I certainly knew of Caitlin. I knew of Caitlin as Bruce and, and not trying to be, I'm trying to figure out the wording, but to me it was Bruce Jenner who won the Olympics and I was 21 years old and riveted and watched on television. He was a great American hero in an Olympics where the Americans did very badly and this was at the time of the Cold War. So there was a lot of competition with the Americans and the Russians and the, and the East Germans. But I had never met her. Grain Carter suggested the idea of certain people, net of their vanity fair reached out to Jenner's people. This was about a year ago. And they said, look, we're, we're just not ready. Because there were rumors all over the place at that point, but then in January, she realized I have two choices, one of which is to move to Alaska and never be heard from again so I can transition and live out the life I need to live it or I need to figure out a way to go public. And they got back in touch with Vanity Fair and I was chosen because there was a sports connection. What is interesting is Caitlin had not read the GQ story about my, my, you know, my love of clothing men and women's and my sexual identity. So that became a great added bonus for us because half the time we talked about boots and purses. Which was kind of fun. And, and what did you sort of learn? Did you learn anything about yourself from her? It's a, it's a good question. I mean, I, I think that I did. I mean, I, you know, people go back and forth, you know, she really a hero. Well, I don't know what that means, except I think she's a hero because she has introduced the concept of transgenderism, it's not a word I know, but that he's introduced transgender men and women into the conversation. And I think on her show, she's been very careful to really bring up substantive themes and I give her a lot of credit for that. Yeah. I mean, it makes me think about my sexual identity, but it also makes me realize that, you know, you, you have to do in life what you want to do as long as you're not hurting someone and that difference from the mainstream is something to be celebrated, not something to run from. And if people react the way they want to react, there's really nothing you can do about that. You need to celebrate yourself in whatever way that is. So in terms of dressing and clothing, you know, I don't hold back and I think to a certain degree, I almost feel obligated that I have to be myself because I think I too, in my own way, want to break down this endless separation, you know, between man and woman, female clothing, male clothing, I don't know what a man is. I don't know what a woman is, except we all have these sort of, to me, ridiculous stereotypes. What does it matter? You should be who you want to be. Have the reactions to the piece been mainly positive? Yes, the reactions have been, to me at least, have been extremely positive. You know, if you go online and look at comments, some of them are hideous, you know, brutal, ridiculous, filled with ignorance. But for me, to me personally, the reaction to the piece was positive in that they felt it was a real piece. I mean, I tried to do reporting. I spent a lot of time talking about Kaitlin's relationship, you know, with the gender side of the family. It was not a puff piece. I mean, Kaitlin made a lot of mistakes in her life as a father. And I think if people appreciated, this was a real story as opposed to kind of a simple celebrity interview, in which all you do is really quote the celebrity. And what about her family's reaction? You know, the family was positive. The Kardashian side bitched and moaned. I'm not sure why they went on his show, her show, I'm sorry, talking about it and complaining about the vanity fair piece. Of course, what they cited, it actually come from the Diane Sawyer piece. I found my dealings with it with Chris to be terrific. I have a lot of admiration for Chris. I know she's a lightning rod in this country. I think she's very bright. She is a great, you know, entrepreneur. She works her butt off. She's created the empire and, you know, what's not to like and what's not to admire. And when I interviewed her, she was very, very open. And she was the key Kardashian I wanted to talk to because obviously she had been married to Kaitlin for a long time. Do they have a relationship today? Yes. I mean, I don't think Chris and Kaitlin really don't. They didn't have one before the transition. But Kaitlin remains very close to Kim and Kim has been terrific. I mean, she comes, you know, she's very busy, but she comes to her house whenever she can. And he's close to all of them. Chloe was angry about the way Kaitlin did it and the way she informed Chris, obviously, Chloe's mother. But Kaitlin's very close to Kendall, very close to Kylie. So there is a closeness. I think with the Jenner side, there's always going to be problems. He really was an absence. She was really an absentee father. And you know, when that's been the case for 10 or 15 years, it's hard to bridge that, no matter how much you try. I will say, and I keep in touch with it, she seemed very happy and very, very fulfilled. And you know, people say, well, what does she look like without makeup? Well, she looked pretty damn good. And she's a very attractive woman. That's the question people want to know. Well, they want to know two things. They want to know that. And they want to know if she's had transformation surgery. And the answer is no, and she doesn't know what she's going to do. Well, that may take some time to think, of course. One of the things that I think that you do so well as a journalist and an author is sort of give a big explanation of the US and everything you do in Americana. And could you tell me about Donald Trump? Apparently, it seems like Donald Trump is fading. Donald Trump was a fan. I think Donald Trump basically plays into the whites of privacy of this country. I think when his, you know, his first salva was about getting rid of all the Mexican immigrants and then building a wall. And unfortunately, this country, there are a lot of people who think that way. There are a lot of people. This is not a very open society at all. This is not a very tolerant society. And Trump played into that. And I also think part of it was a reaction to politicians who never really say anything and everything is scripted. And you know, he was bombastic. They thought he was funny. But I think they're not realizing that this has been nothing but publicity for Donald Trump. And as a president, it would be disastrous because of impulsivity. And I think Trump basically did this as a joke and was amazed by how far he got. But I think it is, it is fading, but it shows that there's a significant swath of America that's angry and reactionary and you know, Americans are always, because as we have lost our identity as a country and are trying to figure out where we fit in the world landscape, we blame other people. So we blame Mexicans. They've ruined the economy. You know, we blame this. We blame that as opposed to looking inward and as I say, this is not a very tolerant place. What are you working on? Are you working on a book now? I know you're writing a lot. Well, I mean, I'm playing around with some book ideas. There are a couple that stick. There are a lot that go by the wayside. You know, I think of an idea that I see, is it so late when you ran after a week, after a month? And some are. What I'm really concentrating on is I'm teaching this fall at the University of Pennsylvania, which is a wonderful school, Ivy League school in Philadelphia. Teaching writing? I'm teaching advanced narrative nonfiction, as I said to the clients. I don't know what advanced narrative nonfiction is. Narrative nonfiction is plenty. Yeah. What is the advanced part? Exactly. That's what you do. I find it enormously challenging and engaging. The students are good, and I feel how much can I really get through to them, and that's my responsibility. So it really has energized me in many ways. And I think we'll be talking about this book, mate. You'll probably be sick of it. But in 10 years, there'll be a 35-year anniversary for this book. I mean, I hope I'm still around for that, but there'll be no more Texas tours. Look, "Frying Life" is an incredible run. The book has done extremely well. I think there are two million copies in print. It was a very good movie. It was a very beloved television show, inspired by the book, but different-funded book. I've had a great run. And after 25 years, I think, you know, I'm ready to kind of give it up. I've been very, very lucky, and it was the point of my life where I hated to hear about it. It just sort of felt like a noose around my neck constantly reminded of the best thing you ever did. You did very young in your life when you were 34. It was the first book I had written. A lot of life is trying to achieve and do better things. I've written better books, but nothing that will have the popularity and shelf life that this book has had. It still sells very well after 25 years. Well, that's great, and I appreciate you talking to me before you stop talking about that and about everything else. Thank you so much for your honesty and your writing and for talking to me. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. Thank you, Buzz Bissinger. The Friday Night Lights 25th Anniversary Edition is out now, and it has a new afterword by the author. And thank you for listening. I was curious to ask you for a favor because I understand that there's people listening in several different countries and lots of different states, and maybe you could send a tweet to our handle and let us know where you're listening from because that would be really fun to know. So the handle is @podpopculture and just send a tweet and say where you're at. This episode was edited by Tom Hansen and music by Call Boy, produced by Renee Vitichte and myself, Christina Yerling-Biro. See you next week. Hello podcast fans, it is I, Bruce Valanche, for over 25 years I worked on the Academy Awards, so you didn't have to. In that time I've seen and heard things that should not be seen or heard or certainly felt. And now, for the first time, I'm sharing all my behind the scenes stories and firsthand knowledge about the Oscars, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the slap, all the things you didn't see. So join me as I use humor and insight to break down the Oscar Awards of the past to explain how and why your favorite movie didn't win, why some actors and some directors had to fire their agents, and how the whole process works or sometimes doesn't work. This is the Oscars, what were they thinking, available wherever you get podcasts. [BLANK_AUDIO]