The Matt Walsh Show - Matt Walsh Has An Honest Conversation With Andrew Klavan: Making Conservative Art Aired: 2024-10-19 Duration: 21:47 === The Creative Process Begins (12:59) === [00:00:00] - - Well, sitting here with someone you may have heard of, Andrew Klavan, this... [00:00:19] Set is way too nice for an interview with you, I guess. [00:00:21] I think it is. [00:00:22] I'm actually out of my league here. [00:00:23] We stepped it up way too much. [00:00:25] We've got to dial it back a little bit. [00:00:28] So, you have a book that just came out, A Woman Underground is what it's called. [00:00:32] I wanted to talk to you about kind of the creative process. [00:00:35] First of all, it goes into writing books because I'm just fascinated by that. [00:00:39] And then some other things. [00:00:40] But before we get into that, so what... [00:00:42] And there's the book right there. [00:00:44] Tell us about the book, first of all. [00:00:45] Well, this is the fourth book in the Cameron Winter series. [00:00:48] And it's kind of the crisis book. [00:00:50] Cameron Winter's kind of unsteady mentally is kind of cracking up. [00:00:55] And he finds that the woman that he... [00:00:59] Loved his whole life, this kind of flame that he's kept and he's lost track of her. [00:01:04] He finds her. [00:01:05] He realizes she's still around and he starts looking for her and as he starts looking for her, he realizes that a killer is looking for her at the same time and he has to see if he can find her before that. [00:01:15] It also takes place in the midst of riots and extremist politics and kind of an America like this America, but a little bit dialed up. [00:01:24] So it's not a political novel, but it's a novel that has a lot of politics in it. [00:01:27] So that book's probably, what, 280 pages or so? [00:01:30] Yeah, it's close to 300, yeah. [00:01:33] And I've written a few books. [00:01:35] None of them were very good. [00:01:37] But nonfiction, and I want to talk about that too, because we're talking off air a little bit about nonfiction versus fiction. [00:01:43] I can't even wrap my head around writing a novel, like writing a story. [00:01:48] I can't, I just can't even, I wouldn't know where to begin. [00:01:51] And you've written, how many novels have you written? [00:01:54] Over 30, yeah. [00:01:55] Yeah. [00:01:56] So... [00:01:58] I don't even know how to ask the question exactly, but how do you organize your mind to sit down and start writing that book? [00:02:05] What's the actual process that ends with that book sitting there? [00:02:09] Well, you start out a lot of times with a what if. [00:02:11] What if this happened? [00:02:13] What if the only woman you ever loved came back in your life but was in trouble? [00:02:16] What if you walked in to look at your baby and make sure she was okay and she was gone? [00:02:22] What if some wild thing just pops into your head? [00:02:26] And you kind of let it just sit, you know, sometimes for years and until it finds the perfect person to be in the story. [00:02:35] Which is one of the interesting things about writing a series is you have to have stories that actually resonate with the character. [00:02:40] Because you don't care if a guy solves a mystery. [00:02:44] You only care what happens to people internally. [00:02:47] So for me, everything has to work perfectly. [00:02:49] As a character thing. [00:02:51] So even if I have a fight scene or a chase scene or something, it has to be important to the guy internally. [00:02:56] Because it's a book, it's not a movie. [00:02:58] It's like you can't just watch something and think, that's exciting. [00:03:00] So as it unfolds, you think, what would happen if this? [00:03:04] You usually come up with some kind of ending. [00:03:06] And then you start to build the steps that go on. [00:03:08] And it's always about the character and the story, for me. [00:03:11] It's always like, you know... [00:03:13] It's always, why is this hard for this guy to do? [00:03:16] You know, not just why is it hard to do, but why does it challenge this guy? [00:03:20] And so, Winter is a very psychologically oriented character. [00:03:24] You know, he's kind of trying to fix his... [00:03:25] He used to be a government assassin, essentially, and now he's come back to the country, and the country is kind of falling apart. [00:03:31] It's corrupt. [00:03:32] He starts to wonder, what was I doing? [00:03:34] You know, what was I fighting for? [00:03:35] And it makes him unravel, you know? [00:03:37] So you have to really be dealing with the guy from the inside out. [00:03:40] And that's the way it gets built over time. [00:03:43] Do you outline it? [00:03:45] I do, yeah. [00:03:46] A lot of people just sit down and write, but I know everything I'm going to say before I say it. [00:03:50] How long does it take you to write that? [00:03:52] This one, it takes about a year from start to finish. [00:03:55] Including editing and all that? [00:03:56] Yeah, yeah. [00:03:58] Including various drafts, yeah. [00:04:00] And you've also written, of course, screenplays. [00:04:03] Yep. [00:04:04] Takes six weeks, and you get paid better. [00:04:07] Yeah, so I assume it's a quicker process, because there's a lot less writing that goes into it, but... [00:04:12] Is even like the creative, the way you think about it, is that different too? [00:04:16] Are you also starting with a what-if and building it out, or is it a different... [00:04:19] You do start with that, but first of all, the characters... [00:04:22] The first film I ever did was called Shock to the System. [00:04:25] It was based on a novel by Simon Brett. [00:04:28] And I... I was a novelist, so I wrote it like a novel. [00:04:30] I did long, long character sketches, and what was he going to be like? [00:04:34] They hired Michael Caine to be in it, and I saw the first day of Rush's, you know, the first rough cut of it, and Michael came in and I thought, what was I doing? [00:04:41] Michael Caine creates the character. [00:04:42] It's going to be Michael Caine. [00:04:43] You know, it's going to be whatever he says it's going to be. [00:04:45] So it's much, much easier. [00:04:47] It's kind of like building the frame to something, and the director and the actors all put it together. [00:04:51] And seriously, if it takes you six weeks to write a screenplay, It's probably because you were busy doing something else. [00:05:00] There's very few words. [00:05:02] It is kind of, every word that appears on screen has to be great. [00:05:06] So every line of dialogue has to be great. [00:05:08] But the descriptions only have to convince people in Hollywood to buy it. [00:05:12] They don't have to be that good. [00:05:13] So it's much easier. [00:05:15] What drew you into novels, to writing novels to begin with? [00:05:18] I just loved them as a kid. [00:05:19] I just loved them. [00:05:21] They formed a lot of my role models for what a guy was like, should be like. [00:05:27] I started reading tough guy detective stories, Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe stories, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. [00:05:36] And those are the kind of guys who kind of spoke to me because I was kind of living in this suburb, this leafy suburb and everything like this. [00:05:41] And I thought, no, these are the guys who like never bend. [00:05:45] They never bend. [00:05:45] And like Raymond Chandler had this great essay about his character. [00:05:49] He invented the phrase mean streets. [00:05:52] And he said, down these mean streets, a man must go who is not himself mean. [00:05:56] And I must have been 15 when I read that. [00:05:58] And I thought, bingo. [00:06:00] That's what I want to be like. [00:06:01] And so I just started creating stories about those kind of characters. [00:06:05] I'm not like that, but I create stories about those characters. [00:06:07] What do you think it takes to be a good writer? [00:06:10] What does it require? [00:06:12] The first thing is, some people have talent, and some people don't. [00:06:16] You can just see it the minute you start reading. [00:06:18] And I always had a gift for it. [00:06:19] I always had an ability to do it. [00:06:21] And then I did stuff... [00:06:23] If you don't have the talent, you think it's just... [00:06:25] There are some people, you just don't have it, and that's it? [00:06:27] There are some people who have no talent, except that they know how to build crappy stories that people will buy, and they make a lot of money. [00:06:33] And that's all good, but I can't get past page three, because the minute I start reading, I think this is garbage, you know? [00:06:39] I won't name them, but there are a lot of them on the bestsellers list, you know? [00:06:43] Why don't you name them? [00:06:44] Name one. [00:06:45] No, I can't. [00:06:45] Okay. [00:06:46] I can't even name one. [00:06:47] But they know who they are. [00:06:49] Well... [00:06:50] I don't want to go off on a different tangent, but I think about this a lot too, about talent. [00:06:55] Do you think, because this applies in many fields, especially in the creative field, and I think I generally believe that it's like you either have it or you don't. [00:07:07] And if you don't have it, you never will. [00:07:10] Is it possible to, you don't have it, and then to somehow gain it? [00:07:14] No. [00:07:15] You know, I have this magic touch because I grew up, my father was a famous DJ, and I grew up in radio, and I have a magic ability to hear broadcasting talent. [00:07:26] So the first time I heard Shapiro... [00:07:28] On the air, I actually got in touch with him and I said, you know, you could have a big career. [00:07:32] He was on some little, you know, L.A. station doing a show with three people in it. [00:07:37] And I said, they should take those other two people off the air. [00:07:40] And, you know, you have it. [00:07:43] Knowles can pretend to have it. [00:07:45] I was just talking to Glenn Beck today. [00:07:47] Glenn Beck is the greatest broadcaster alive. [00:07:51] And before I went on the air, I was on the phone listening to his commercials. [00:07:55] And I was embarrassed that I ever went near a microphone just listening to Beck work because he just has this thing. [00:08:00] It just comes across the mic. [00:08:03] And look, you know, in your movie, I can see it. [00:08:06] I can see that you have this way of communicating through the camera. [00:08:09] It's just something people have or they don't have. [00:08:10] You cannot buy that. [00:08:12] You cannot buy it. [00:08:13] You can hone it, you know? [00:08:14] Like Kevin Costner Doesn't work very hard. [00:08:18] He strolls on and he's handsome. [00:08:20] There are a lot of people these days having a fair amount of success in creative fields, even though they have no talent for them at all. [00:08:27] They suck, yeah. [00:08:28] Because we don't... [00:08:29] We don't reward talent. [00:08:31] People reward stuff that fits in with the narrative and all these things. [00:08:36] It's really interesting for me, because the other thing now, after all these years, I can tell a good writer when I see one, and you can read one paragraph, and you just think, this is garbage. [00:08:46] But it might have something that the audience is going to like, and it is a business, and if you sell copies, you sell copies. [00:08:52] What tells you in one paragraph, so in one paragraph you can tell if someone's a good writer. [00:08:56] Yeah. [00:08:57] What are you looking for in a paragraph? [00:08:58] It's not something you're looking for. [00:09:00] It's a kind of magic that just comes across. [00:09:02] The scene leaps to life. [00:09:05] One of the things that people keep saying about this is they start it and they can't finish it. [00:09:09] That's because I'm good at what I do. [00:09:11] You can see it immediately that I'm in the story. [00:09:14] I see the things that they're describing and they're kind of Resonate with me. [00:09:19] And then you can see somebody who's just phoning it in or working really hard but just doesn't have what it takes. [00:09:25] We were talking off air a little bit about non-fiction versus fiction. [00:09:28] You were saying it's the challenges of not only writing fiction but also getting people to read fiction. [00:09:34] Wow, especially in the right, yeah. [00:09:35] Yeah, and I'm totally a culprit here because I generally only read non-fiction. [00:09:44] I'll go through weird phases. [00:09:45] I went through a weird phase like Eight years ago where I just got into Russian literature and I started reading Dostoevsky. [00:09:51] Yeah, yeah. [00:09:52] Tolstoy. [00:09:52] And then I'm not interested anymore and then I go on to nonfiction. [00:09:57] But I also recognize that that's a problem. [00:10:00] I know that there's real value in reading fiction and this idea that you should only read nonfiction because you're learning. [00:10:06] You're learning about a thing that actually happened. [00:10:07] Right. [00:10:08] There's only value in that. [00:10:09] I think that's kind of the thought process, especially if conservatives only read nonfiction. [00:10:13] That's sort of my thought process, but I also recognize that that's not right. [00:10:16] What's the value of fiction? [00:10:19] Fiction grows your life. [00:10:20] There's just no question about it. [00:10:22] If you read really good fiction, and it can be genre fiction, be fantasy, mysteries, all these things, if it's really good, it grows your life. [00:10:29] You get to turn off all the things that are usually on in life. [00:10:34] Your moral sense, your anxiety, your worries about things. [00:10:38] All of a sudden you just can observe the world and experience the world. [00:10:43] Fiction is an experience. [00:10:44] It's not an actual thought process. [00:10:45] You read something and you live it. [00:10:47] Somebody dies. [00:10:47] You cry. [00:10:48] Somebody murders somebody. [00:10:49] You're afraid. [00:10:50] You're horrified. [00:10:51] So it's an actual experience. [00:10:53] And then you have an experience that you would never have had in your life. [00:10:56] And you get to live it without having to make decisions about it. [00:11:02] And somehow, like I've read a lot of fiction, I've been reading it all my life, and somehow you just know life better afterwards. [00:11:08] It's an amazing, amazing thing. [00:11:10] And conservatives are very practical people a lot of times and also very suspicious people. [00:11:17] Why are you telling me this if it's not true? [00:11:21] And it's really interesting. [00:11:22] And men read less fiction than women, and I'm kind of a man's writer. [00:11:26] And so it really is a challenge. [00:11:30] I've written a couple of nonfiction books, and you can get interviews on every conservative... [00:11:36] there is, you know, they know who I am, they wanna talk to me, and here I am talking about a subject, they have a book, they get that. [00:11:42] But if you have a book that's fiction, a story, they don't understand, unless it has a news hook, they don't understand what it's about. [00:11:50] There are a few exceptions, Glenn Beck is one of them, Glenn Beck reads fiction, so when he talks to you, you actually know, he actually knows what you're doing. [00:11:57] Rush Limbaugh used to read a certain kind of fiction. [00:12:00] But most conservative guys are like, you know, we're moralists. [00:12:05] And so fiction is beyond morality. [00:12:08] It's kind of a meta thing. [00:12:09] The morality you get from it is understanding life better. [00:12:12] And so that's a moral enterprise. [00:12:14] but fiction can have bad guys who win and good guys who lose and unfair things that happen and drives conservatives crazy. [00:12:21] You know, we talk a big game about traditional values, but how many of us are actually walking the walk when it comes to prayer? [00:12:27] Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. [00:12:28] Most of us are about as consistent with our prayer life as Congress is with balancing the budget. [00:12:33] We've all been there. [00:12:34] Prayer feels so daunting to get started. [00:12:35] We end up not doing it at all. [00:12:37] Make excuses. [00:12:38] I'm too busy. [00:12:39] I don't know how. [00:12:39] I'll do it tomorrow. [00:12:40] The list goes on. [00:12:41] Enter Howlo, the number one prayer and meditation app. === Liberal Arts and Discipline (09:02) === [00:12:44] and they're starting a new series called How to Pray. [00:12:48] Two weeks, daily sessions, no fluff, with guided prayers being led by guests like Mark Wahlberg and Jonathan Rumi. [00:12:54] You'll learn how you pray with scripture while getting familiar with prayers that have been around in church history for centuries. [00:13:00] They've got everything from prayers to help your kids navigate the chaos of a new school year to prayers for athletes looking to up their mental game. [00:13:07] Look, whether you're a prayer novice or a seasoned pro, Hallow's got something for you. [00:13:11] Who knows? [00:13:11] You might even become a slightly less annoying person to be around. [00:13:14] That would be a bonus. [00:13:15] So do yourself a favor, put down the remote, close Twitter, and download Halo at halo.com slash mattwals for an exclusive three-month free trial. [00:13:24] That's halo.com slash mattwals for an exclusive three-month free trial of all 10,000 plus prayers and meditations. [00:13:32] What do you say to the argument that the novel has been replaced these days by shows and films and that's sort of our version of the novel? [00:13:40] Yeah, I think... [00:13:41] Is that the same value? [00:13:42] No, there's nothing as intimate as the novel. [00:13:44] There's nothing like... [00:13:45] There's nothing at 3 o'clock in the morning when you're alone, you can actually connect with another mind in a novel and it's just incredibly direct. [00:13:55] Michael Caine creates a character, but now you're no longer reading me. [00:13:58] I wrote what he said, but now you're getting it interpreted by Michael Caine. [00:14:03] Where this, you're getting something direct. [00:14:04] You're getting a vision of life direct. [00:14:07] When you pay attention and when it's done well, it's a remarkable experience. [00:14:11] And people who love novels will tell you that you just get carried away in a way you don't anywhere else. [00:14:16] And so the novel is now no longer what it was when I was a kid, which was the major form of entertainment. [00:14:23] I mean, that's the movies. [00:14:24] Actually, even when I was a kid, it was still the movies. [00:14:27] But it's still different. [00:14:29] It's like theater. [00:14:30] You know, theater is not the main form of entertainment, but there's nothing like going on and seeing a live play, seeing an actor work live. [00:14:36] It's remarkable. [00:14:37] And there's nothing like picking up a story that's going directly from one mind to another. [00:14:42] Do you think there are any television shows that have almost made it to the level of a novel in terms of the intimacy of the storytelling and the depth of it? [00:14:51] Nothing is intimate, but there are some that have been as complex, like The Sopranos, I think, was up there. [00:14:58] When I watched The Sopranos, I knew I was watching a work of art. [00:15:01] When I watched a couple of seasons of Game of Thrones, I thought that. [00:15:06] TV has just gotten so much better than it used to be. [00:15:09] When you go back and look at television, it's amazing how bad it was. [00:15:12] And it really has gotten better. [00:15:15] But it still hasn't got that utter engagement that you get with a book, for me. [00:15:20] Now, I hate to pay you a compliment, but you're a real writer. [00:15:25] You're a good writer. [00:15:27] I'm an actual writer, yeah. [00:15:28] So you're an artist? [00:15:29] Yes. [00:15:31] There's not a lot of company. [00:15:32] You don't have a lot of company on the right, especially among conservative commentators. [00:15:40] A lot of conservative commentators write books, and 99% of them are just god-awful terrible books. [00:15:48] Why is that? [00:15:49] Why is it so rare? [00:15:52] You know, actually, this book is a good answer to this question. [00:15:57] This is a book in which it's about American life now. [00:16:01] And so it has to have politics in it, right? [00:16:03] It has to have people on the right and people on the left and the kind of tensions that we're all living with now. [00:16:07] You can't write about contemporary America without writing about politics. [00:16:12] But the main character has no politics. [00:16:14] He doesn't care. [00:16:15] It's one of the running gags. [00:16:17] People keep trying to convince him of their politics. [00:16:19] And he just says, I don't care. [00:16:20] I'm just looking for this girl. [00:16:21] I just want to find this girl. [00:16:23] To do that takes a lot of discipline. [00:16:27] You really have to understand what the novel is about to not tell people what to think, but to let the experience live. [00:16:34] And conservatives want to tell you what to think. [00:16:36] And so do leftists. [00:16:37] That's why so much left-wing art is crap. [00:16:40] It's like they want to preach to you about what's right and what's wrong. [00:16:43] And I just want each character to sort of make his case in the story. [00:16:47] I mean, this has a main character and you live in his head. [00:16:50] But there are a lot of characters and they're very different. [00:16:52] And every time one of them opens his mouth, you're getting an entirely different consciousness and an entirely different way of looking at the world. [00:16:58] And that's not something political people are very comfortable with. [00:17:02] I mean, it is the way I look at the world. [00:17:04] Even when I'm talking about politics, I kind of look at the world like I understand there are people who disagree and see it from a different way and all that stuff. [00:17:11] And they should be in prison, of course, but that's not the way I write a novel. [00:17:14] When I write a novel, I put it all aside and just let the characters live in the story. [00:17:18] It's hard to do. [00:17:19] Yeah. [00:17:20] I mean, it's true that the extreme left has the same problem, which is why they do terrible art these days. [00:17:25] But also, you don't have to go back that far to find a time when liberals were... [00:17:30] Making great art. [00:17:31] At least films and shows and even music. [00:17:35] And it does just seem that like... [00:17:41] Only liberals were doing it. [00:17:44] It's like almost all the great artists... [00:17:48] Certainly in modern American culture have been liberals and probably if you go back historically all the great ones were liberal by their own standards. [00:17:56] But liberal is different than leftist. [00:17:58] I think you're right that you have to be liberal in the sense that you allow each person to be himself. [00:18:05] You know, I don't know about you, but I always get these letters. [00:18:07] How can I convince so-and-so to believe so-and-so? [00:18:09] And I think, you know, just leave them alone, you know, just be who they are, which is what art is about in a lot of ways is letting people, you know, I don't think Shakespeare was a villain, but when he wrote Macbeth, he let Macbeth be this complete person who had motives for what he was doing and a reason for being in a way of looking at things. [00:18:25] And so it is, you do have to be liberal in that sense. [00:18:29] But there are plenty of political conservatives that keep their heads down who have been great artists. [00:18:34] I mean, Cormac McCarthy just died. [00:18:35] I'm absolutely positive he was a conservative. [00:18:38] And, you know, he never came out about it. [00:18:40] I don't know if you saw that thing with Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick, where they were objecting to the fact that Donald Trump used Full Metal Jacket in one of his ads. [00:18:50] And Kubrick's daughter came out and said he voted for Reagan. [00:18:52] He would have loved Trump. [00:18:54] And he just kept it quiet. [00:18:55] So there are a lot more politically conservative artists But you can't be conservative in the sense that you believe there's only one way to live or that anybody who disagrees... [00:19:05] I mean, for instance, I'm an ardent anti-feminist, but this book has a feminist in it who's an absolutely lovely person and who the hero, who's a very patriarchal guy, he loves her. [00:19:18] He thinks she's a wonderful person, even though he can't stand anything she writes or says. [00:19:22] You have to be liberal in that sense, I think, to create art. [00:19:26] We've got to wrap it up. [00:19:27] How do you think we get conservatives more involved in art? [00:19:32] Well, I've been banging this drum for 20 years. [00:19:34] This is why I started talking about this. [00:19:36] Because when I lived in England for a long time and I came back and found our culture so sickened and twisted that I was shocked. [00:19:43] And so I started giving speeches to conservative groups saying, you know, this is about the movies. [00:19:47] This is not about winning elections. [00:19:49] This is about talking to people about what life is really like and showing them what life is like. [00:19:55] 20 years ago, when I started doing that, they looked at me like I was nuts. [00:19:58] Like, they kind of thought I was cute because I was working in Hollywood, and I dressed all in black, and they thought, like, wow, this is cool, you know, Hollywood guy. [00:20:05] But they had no idea what I was talking about. [00:20:06] Today they do. [00:20:07] Today they get it. [00:20:08] They still think that what we need is more propaganda movies that'll sell, you know, conservatism. [00:20:14] But it's starting to change. [00:20:16] I mean, this place, look at this place. [00:20:17] I mean, you made two cultural things. [00:20:20] I know they're nonfiction, but they're still cultural works. [00:20:24] Jeremy understands, obviously, that movies have to be created by people like us. [00:20:30] That's the important thing. [00:20:30] It's not that we write conservative things, it's that conservatives make stuff. [00:20:34] So I think it's changing, and I think I would describe it as a field of ice with little... [00:20:40] Spriggs, you know, popping up through it. [00:20:42] So I'm kind of hopeful about it. [00:20:44] And I just think you've got to keep explaining to conservatives what art is and the fact that conservative art is not like conservative life. [00:20:51] You know, I live a conservative life. [00:20:53] I'm a married man, a family man, a religious man. [00:20:55] I, you know, love my country. [00:20:57] That's the life I live. [00:20:58] But that's not what art is about. [00:20:59] Art is about, like, you know, dramatic things that happen because of clashes of personality. [00:21:04] And that's a very different thing. [00:21:06] And it's like I said, it enlarges your life. [00:21:08] The people who wrote The Constitution and the Declaration read Shakespeare, they read Euripides, they read the Greeks, they read art. [00:21:18] That's why they had that broad way of looking at life that helped them to form a government. [00:21:23] And if you read the Federalist Papers, those were written by people who understand what people are like, and people like that have read the arts. [00:21:32] Where can people buy the book? [00:21:33] Anywhere? [00:21:33] Anywhere. [00:21:34] If you get it, you can get it at our shop, the Daily Wire shop, so I should say that out of loyalty. [00:21:38] If you get it on Amazon and move it up the list, that helps it a little bit. [00:21:41] Good talking to you. [00:21:42] It's always great talking to you. [00:21:43] Have you met my wife?