Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

"To pick up a magazine story about [Generation  X] in those years was to know, before even skimming it, that you were about to dunk your Doc Martens into a stagnant pond of clichés. Take the words below, hire a chimpanzee to string them together at random, and you will come up with a typical opening paragraph from any 1993 issue of any newsmagazine in America."

That's journalist Jeff Gordinier knocking the tired prose and dull metaphors that most writers use when describing a cultural trend. Gordinier has spent years as a magazine writer at Details magazine, teaching himself how to shatter stereotypes and build a better interview.

He's our special guest this week, talking about his new tome, X Saves the World--a book that explores Generation X with a more sophisticated kind of journalism.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
Your book rests on a years and years of interviews with creative people. You've had thought-provoking interviews with everybody from Marilyn Manson to filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. How do you run a thought-provoking interview, something that goes beyond the fluffy profiles that too many celebrity journalists turn out? What's your advice for young journalists as they conduct their first profile interviews?

Jeff Gordinier:
Well, I’m a big believer in research, but for counterintuitive reasons. Continue reading...

 

Sure it’s important to learn as much as you can about the person you’re interviewing so that you don’t look like an idiot when you meet him. (“So, Mr. Eastwood, you’re a famous movie star — but have you ever had the urge to direct?”)

But I also think it’s important to read through a massive heap of clips so that you can subsequently ask original questions. If you’ve ever undertaken the grim task of slogging through, say, 200 interviews with Sean Penn, you know that the same narcoleptic questions seem to crop up over and over and over again.

It’s almost like some journalists feel compelled to toss out the moldiest old chestnuts simply because they’ve been asked before — “hey, this question sure gets asked a lot, so it must be a good one!” Which must be incredibly boring for someone like Sean Penn.

But this presents you, the enterprising whippersnapper, with a golden opportunity: find out what the tired media redundancies are, and steer clear of them. Ask about something else. Ask about something unexpected.

I’m fond of the “hail Mary” question — that weird, random moment when you decide to ask a celebrity or a politician about the sugar cereal he ate as a child, or the music she tends to crank in the car, or a memory of heartbreak from adolescence, or where that brooch came from, or whatever.

I’m never disappointed when I attempt a question out of the blue, something that has nothing to do with the official talking points — it always seems to open the person up, and it makes the experience feel more like a casual conversation than an “interview.” Which is, ultimately, the goal, at least for me.

Personally I tend to clam up when I feel as though I’m being grilled. Famous people are no different. Yes, I do like to jot down a long list of well-researched questions in advance — just so that I’ll have something to fall back on if the conversation stalls — but most of the time I wind up tossing the questions aside after 10 minutes and just winging it, letting the conversation unfold as naturally as possible.

Probably the simplest advice is this: Ask about what you want to know. If there’s a subject you’re wondering about, ask.

When I’m writing a profile, I don’t tend to think in terms of its being a “positive” or “negative” take on a person. I just try to give the reader an impression: what the profiled person is like to be around, his or her speech patterns, tics, clothes, habits, interests. I like to collect as many observed details as possible, glue them together into a mosaic, and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions about the person encountered in the profile.

You’ll occasionally hear a publicist ask, before you’ve begun the reporting, “What’s your angle?” I have no angle. My angle is simply: go, talk, hang out, get as much time as possible, see what transpires.

I’m open to anything. I’m not prone to quick judgments. But the publicists don’t always believe this. Some of them seem to presume that all journalists have a secret agenda, which I find confusing. Am I supposed to have an agenda? If so, please let me know. Maybe I’ve been doing it all wrong.