On Money, Mailer, and Marijuana
http://bigthink.com/ideas/19743
April 23, 2010
"The laughter is unlike most settings you'll find. The level of
intensity, the adrenaline, the stakes are incredible. I mean, it is
addictive." As an actor and playwright, you might think John Buffalo
Mailer is talking about the close-knit world of theater. In fact,
he's referring to Wall Street, where he shadowed high-powered traders
to prepare for his role in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" sequeland
where he found his preconceived notions about the world of finance blown apart.
"There is a lot of good that these guys do," Mailer explains in his
Big Think interview. "To lump all traders into a category is as
insane as lumping any group of people into one category." He ended up
not only having fun in spite of himself, but also feeling that Wall
Street is "not at all" at odds with Main Streetand hoping that the
film, scheduled for release this year, will "serve as a way for us to
bridge that gap."
Mailer, son of the late novelist Norman, also discusses the many
things his father taught him about writing and manhood, including a
lesson in courage during his mother's ongoing bout with cancer. (His
mother Norris Church Mailer, also a writer, has offered her own
perspective on the family's story in a recent memoir.) Defending his
father against accusations of humorlessness and misogyny, he declares
that the writer "loved women" and retells his father's favorite joke.
Finally, as the former executive editor of High Times magazine,
Mailer makes an economic, historical, and personal case for the
legalization of marijuanawhile at the same time wondering whether
making weed respectable will destroy its outlaw appeal. He even drops
some tantalizing hints about what more than a few college students
have wondered over the years: what it's actually like to work at High Times.
--
http://bigthink.com/ideas/19724
John Buffalo Mailer: John Buffalo Mailer. I'm an actor, writer and
producer, and journalist.
Question: How did you study for your role in "Wall Street 2"?
John Buffalo Mailer: It was a fairly extensive rehearsal process. I
took trips out to Long Island, kind of just got the feel of the town
that we had set my character coming from, voice lessons, learning the
floor, learning the actual trade of Wall Street traders. It was kind
of an incredible process. So Shia [LeBouf] and myself and several
other people, we just spent as many hours as we could shadowing
different traders on the floor kind of finding where it stands today,
how it's different from the first Wall Street, how it's the same. It
was an amazing ride. I'll tell you that.
Question: How has Wall Street culture changed since the original film came out?
John Buffalo Mailer: Well the numbers are bigger for one
thing. It's much more global. It's less centric to whatever area
you're in. You know, some floors you go in and when the bell rings
it's silent and all you see are the computer screens starting to
light up as people do different trades. It used to be kind of like a
big bang would start off the day. A company that was I think the one
I learned the most from, just in terms of my own character and the
kind of firm he worked in, was John Thomas Financial. And there it's
like, you know, warriors in an arena getting ready for
battle. Thomas Belesis just fires these guys up like there is no
tomorrow, and I absolutely got addicted to that optimism and
adrenaline and that "We're going to do it, we're going to do it,
buddy" kind of attitude that he had, so you know it runs the full
spectrum. His firm is much more like what it used to be in terms of
warriors on a mission. I think now it's a lot more relaxed. You see
a lot of sneakers and jeans at places depending on which firm you're
talking to.
Question: What surprised you about Wall Street culture?
John Buffalo Mailer: I had a lot of preconceived notions going
in. It wasn't an industry that I really respected much. My feeling
was kind of like look, you're not making anything. You're taking
money from one place, putting it in another and taking your cut and
that's just not really kind of soul-satisfying at the end of the day,
but what I learned is, on a larger scale is how much the Wall Street
industry funnels and fuels so many others and we would not have a lot
of medical research without it. We would not have, you know,
educational programs without it. There is a lot of good that these
guys do, and to lump all traders into a category is as insane as
lumping any group of people into one category. You're going to find
the good people and bad all around. I had a lot of fun with those
guys. The laughter is unlike most settings you'll find. The level
of intensity, the adrenaline, the stakes are incredible. I mean it
is addictive. I can understand why people end up spending 23 or 24
hours a day hitting it.
Question: Is Wall Street fundamentally at odds with Main Street?
John Buffalo Mailer: No, not at all. Not at all. I mean I think
one of the larger problems going on right now is, debate has replaced
discussion. As I say you can't lump Wall Street into one
category. That doesn't mean anything. Every firm has a different
attitude and does different things and puts their cherries in certain
places and their money in others. Some are vicious, nasty, I will
cut you down at all costs to make a buck, some have a much higher
moral standard. My hope is that the film will actually serve as a
way for us to bridge that gap between Wall Street and Main
Street. Certainly that's dealt with in the film of how it does
affect everybody, so, you know, I always find that when you can
create a movie or a play or a book that gives somebody a safe
theoretical place to discuss what is really going on in the day it
tends to forward discussion, so that would be my hope coming out of the film.
Question: What first drew you to the theater?
John Buffalo Mailer: You know I grew up in an artistic family where
everyone was doing something in one field of the arts or another. I
was I think 12 years old when I did my first acting at the Actor's
Studio and, you know, James Dean once said that the only reason to
become and actor is because you have to. I think that you know from
a young age if that is a certain rush that you're going to need to
satisfy you and to make you feel fulfilledand if you don't then you
shouldn't do it. It's just too brutal of a business most of the
time. So I think that at the ripe old age of 12 I figured out, you
know, I kind of like this thing. I like talking to these people.
Question: How is working on a play different from working on a film?
John Buffalo Mailer: Man, it's apples and oranges. You can't really
beat movies. It's a fun gig. I mean it's nice to have a trailer and
makeup and you know an entire army that is basically all there for
the same purpose, which is make the best film we can. Yeah, when
you're on an Oliver Stone set everybody brings their A
game. Everybody brings their A game, from the top to the bottom and
in between. In terms of theater you know there is no way to really
duplicate that rush you get when you take an audience that is live
and right there in front of you through the journey of a great play
and you go through these emotions so that they can experience them
without having to go through them themselves. It's a certain kind of
human compact that obviously you lose as soon as there is a screen
and a camera there, so I think we'll always have theater. I think
theater will always be a powerful force because we need that human
touch, particularly as we spend more and more time with machines,
cell phones, computers we start to lose our humanity. I mean the
price of our technology may very well end up being our humanity, so I
think you got to have that balance. Personally I try to do one for
one if I can. Do a movie, do a play, do a movie, do a playwhile at
the same time writing and being in that cycle. Those two fields are
very… Writing and acting are almost diametrically opposed in terms of
being an actor it's in your interest to be in shape and to be healthy
and to have a strong voice and to be flexible. As a writer you're
sitting in this position for hours on end. You get up and you can't
put your shoulder down. It's not a healthy existence so to speak and
it's probably not healthy for the person that lives with you either,
but you do the best you can.
Question: What theatrical work are you proudest of?
John Buffalo Mailer: You know I'm probably most proud of the plays
that I've written just because as the playwright, you know, you're
God. You get to do everything. You don't make any money hardly at
all, but you really get to kind of control the scene. As a
screenwriter you're the towel boy in the whorehouse. I mean you
know you're lucky if you're invited to set. It's kind of like here
is the blueprint, go and that's you know there has been some debate
as to whether or not a film should be by the director or by the
screenwriter or by both. The screenwriter lost out on
that. Directors win. In theater it is absolutely the opposite, but
you know I'm proud of all the… Well, of most of the theater acting
that I've done. The thing is, to try to talk about a performance
that will never be seen again, that was only lived by the people
there, it's kind of like telling somebody about your dream. You know
if they love you they'll listen and smile, but they can't really get
it, so there is a certain infinite quality to film that is nice. You
do the work and you know it's always going to be there. The flip
side is if you do bad work it's always going to be there.
Question: What are your goals as an actor and playwright?
John Buffalo Mailer: You know, I just I love telling stories and as
long as I can make my living doing that in all the different mediums
that I have been lucky enough to, that's enough for me. Really it's,
you know, there's different scales of stories. Sometimes you want to
tell one that 20, 30, 40, 50 million people will want to see and
hear. Sometimes you do one that you know 150 will want to see on one
night. As long as you're telling the right story for the right
audience and they're getting something out of it it's essentially the
same feeling to me. Obviously there is you know the economic
necessity of paying your bills and how do you do that. Ten years
ago when I started out I was kind of told I was insane for trying to
pursue multiple fields at once because in five years everyone who
just did one would have five times the resume I would if I was lucky,
but I took that gamble because I just my gut told me it was the right
thing to do and you know as an actor there is so much downtime you
want to fill it with something else and as a writer you know
sometimes you're doing a passion project, sometimes it's a paid gig,
sometimes there is nothing, so you can do a journalistic piece. At
this point I think the shift starting about 2008, a lot of factors as
well I'm sure, but whatever the reasons, 2008 it felt as though the
combination of distribution models starting to tighten and the
publishing and film and music industries having to revolutionize
themselves to catch up, and understand how this is going to work in
the new millennium has made it a lot easier to pursue multi-platform
careers. It's much easier to hire one person who can do three or
four different things than one specialist in that field, which as I
think about the college graduating classes and high school classes
that are coming up now they're in a unique position. I mean they're
entering one of the toughest economies of all time. At the same time
if they're willing to work really hard the ability they have to learn
something much faster than we ever did before is there and it's
really a question of are you willing to put in the effort and go that
extra mile. Because if you are I think there's actually more
opportunities out there.
Question: What was it like growing up as Norman Mailer's son?
John Buffalo Mailer: It's always an interesting question of what was
it like as Norman Mailer's son because I could easily turn it back
and say what's it like not to. I don't really have a comparison
aside from friends of mine and discussions, but I think I do have a
gauge of some of the differences that it would be, because I didn't
always realize my dad was Norman Mailer. I always knew he was Dad,
and then I forget the exact age when it dawned on me that, you know,
he is actually someone who affects the public consciousness of the
time. It was amazing. I mean he was a rock star and brilliant and
kind and funny and generous and scary when he needed to be and, you
know, hard as a father. I mean he expected a lot from us and he
really pushed us and you know one of his favorite lines was, "If you
think I'm being hard on you, wait until life hits you because life is
a hell of a lot tougher than I am." And I took everything he said to
heart. He taught me how to write, which was scary and intimidating
and hard, but ultimately one of the biggest gifts I could have ever asked for.
There is one moment that actually comes to mind when you think of the
kind of crystallizing factor. You know I kind of lived a utopian
existence until I was about 20, 21 when my mom got sick with cancer
and it was bad. It was very scary and at the time I was doing my
first screenplay and I was on deadline and was alone with my father
in Massachusetts. She was recovering in the hospital. We were going
back and forth and she wasn't going to be able to come home for a few
days, but we knew about the longer road ahead and the chemo and the
radiation and all of that and at a certain point I said to my dad. I
said, "Pop, you know, I don't how I'm going to work. I don't know how
I can get this done. You know, I got to hand this script in and I
can't think about anything but Mom." He said, "Well, you know, now
is the time when you're going to learn what it means to
compartmentalize." And those words really had an impact on me and
have enabled me through the last 10 years of more surgeries than I
care to remember and more scary times than I wish my mother had ever
had to go through. Those words enabled me to actually continue to do
my job and to get my work done, which is so important if you… I mean
for all those who have kind of helped someone heal through a sickness
you know it's just so important to be able bring exciting news to the
table and to be able to get their minds off of the fact that they're
sick and to do that you got to work your ass off and have some
successes and bring in some things, so those words I mean I could
pick a million different instances with my dad, but that one moment
when he you know he didn't say, "I understand." "Go lay down and
cry." "Go do this." He said, "No, be a man." "Stand up,
compartmentalize." "Get your work done." And that is really what it
means to be a man is to take on all the emotional pain and work
through what you got to work through with the people you love while
at the same time getting your business done. And it's tough. I think
that most children when they grow up they kind of realize that the
things they didn't like about their parents or didn't understand
about them they get now and that you know every year you get more
responsibilities. You get more overhead. You get more things you
got to take care off. It's hard to keep a chipper, open, happy
attitude about it all the time and you shouldn't because part of it
is preparing your kids for when they're going to take over the reins
and do it, so I was just incredibly thankful of that particular moment.
Question: What did your father teach you about writing?
John Buffalo Mailer: Oh, wow. Well he probably taught me everything
I know, aside from dialogue, which I think I get from my mom a lot
more. He certainly didn't teach me everything he knew, but you know
he has got this book out called "The Spooky Art," which is
essentially an advanced book on writing and it's not… You know it's
not ABC, but it's for people who feel that bug and know that they're
writers and are willing to put in that time alone. Pretty much the
vast majority of what he taught me you can find in that book. You
know some basic things of "Don't say something twice. Find the right
way to say it. Don't use words you don't need. Don't use adjectives
to describe something." There is some basic stuff in there. The
nuance of a character and the journey and what it means to write a
novel. You know these are deep philosophical conversations that you
can't really put a button on.
Work ethic is one of the biggest things he taught me. That man
worked like every day, every day, 9 to 5, well 9 to 9 in his case,
but he would treat it as if it was a 9 to 5 job. He would clock
in. He would put in his hours. That is how you can write those you
know incredibly long books that unfortunately there is not much
market for anymore, but that is also how you can explore an idea on a
deeper level than we get in our media surface these days. It's tough.
I mean, just on a little side note with that one of the reasons I'm
so happy to be doing this show is because one of the virtues of the
Internet is that now for those who want it you can get into something
that is deeper than what you have in 35 seconds or a minute on
whichever pundit show you're doing, which are essentially designed to
reinforce what people already think and not make them question
anything. Noam Chomsky is, in some ways, a victim of this new
millennium we live in because you can't pull a sound bite from that
guy and understand what he is talking about. You have to hear the
whole paragraph. You have to hear the whole page. You've got to
hear the whole conversation if you really want to understand it and
that could change your life. But it's almost as though we've been
duped into believing we don't have 25 minutes to have something
change our life. We don't have 2. You know, we're tweeting. We're
running around. We're 15 words or less. You know that to me I don't
think there is any conspiracy or master plan behind it, but it does
echo "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and you combine that with you know the
amount of medications that doctors are prescribing for people and
suddenly we're in "Brave New World" and it's this bizarre combination
of events that I don't think was planned. I don't think is any kind
of plot on anyone's part. It's just that our system is gearing us
this way and we need to address that. We need to address that
publicly in a way that is productive, in a way that actually gives
people tangible things they can do to stop the insanity of being
available every moment, things like that.
Question: Your father was often accused of having no sense of humor.
Was this true?
John Buffalo Mailer: Oh, my God. I mean, if anything his problem
was that he didn't realize that humor will not translate in sound
bites and quotes and so oftentimes he would say something you know
just off the cuff that was silly and funny and ridiculous and
everyone there would laugh like you wouldn't believe and then it
would end up in print the next day and, you know, something crazy
like, "Norman Mailer said women should be kept in cages." You know,
things like that. It was just, he loved women so much. I mean
probably more than anything in the world he loved women. He got put
into a position where he was kind of seen as the anti-feminist,
although he was for the feminist movement. He just didn't want
people to get consumed with the idea that this was going to be much
better. He said, "Look, women should be treated equally and
fairly." There is no question about it, but there was a certain kind
of totalitarian element I think when the movement was starting
off. There were so many different factions and that's I think what
he was taking issue with was the idea of, look, you can't go from
male dominance to female dominance and expect anything to be
better. We're all shits, ultimately, and we've got to do the best we
can together.
So you know those who were lucky enough to know my dad know that he
was one of the funniest guys who ever lived. I mean he had this
great… Or I thought it was great. I shouldn't preface it by saying
it was great, but he had this joke he used to tell whenever he would
start a lecture. He would flip the jokes around. He had one he
would do for a year or so, but basically he said that it was about
karma and reincarnation and he said, "You know, so I die and I go
up to the gates and I see Gabriel." And he says, "Oh, Mr. Mailer,
we're so happy to see you. We've been expecting you for a while and
we ask this of all of our new recipients. What would you like to be
reincarnated as? It's a question we ask everybody because we see that
you're on the list for reincarnation." And he says, "Well, you know,
I'd like to be a black athlete, honestly. That's, you know, put
me…Start me in a ghetto. Do whatever. I'll work my way up, but I
would really, you know, I've been kind of this little Jewish guy all
my life and I've, you know, done what I've done, but that's what I
really want to be." And Gabriel says, "Well I hate to tell you this
Mr. Mailer, but black athletes are the most oversubscribed-to
reincarnation requests we have. It's a list that goes miles long. I
can't tell you the chances are good, but let me see what we have you
down for and then we can work from there." And he looks and he goes,
"Well we have you down for cockroach, but you're going to be the
fastest cockroach on the block." And that was my dad's sense of, you
know, laughing at himself, laughing at existence, the universe, all
of it and not being too serious about what we do with because at the
end of the day if you're here it's a blessing. It's you know life is
hard. Life is hard for everybody at some point, but it's those who
are able to laugh at it and laugh with it and roll with it that
ultimately I think live the fulfilling lives that we're all trying to
do. You know, and big step there is to not take yourself too
seriously from the start.
Question: Who is carrying on your father's legacy?
John Buffalo Mailer: There's several people out there who I feel are
doing their part in that way. I would say the only one person I know
of who kind of combines the elements that my father brought to the
table in terms of affecting the public discourse would be Oliver
Stone. His combination of academic brilliance and real life
experience and just understanding people I think is what makes him
such a great storyteller, but also he cares. He is interested. He
meets somebody and he listens to them. He has some questions. He
wants to know what they're about. And as a result I think his
worldview is much more complex and whole and most of the other… I
don't know if we even have a category of public intellectual anymore,
but he would be in that category. He would be out there. The
reason… One of the things that sets him apart though is he is
commercial. He is mainstream. He makes big movies and he is one of
the last guys that can make big movies that actually have something
to say, that you know challenge the audience in a way while entertaining them.
But there's, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are
doing it. I don't know if it's possible for anyone to really have
that level of a voice anymore because our media is so diluted and
parsed out. You know people kind of go for the news and information
that they want as opposed to picking up a paper and seeing what
catches their eye. It's a very stark difference and, you know, it's
there is a few stories that end up going wide and everybody hears
about them, but they're usually salacious celebrity stuff that is not
about substance or it's the latest disaster and it's kind of covered
in a way that is just trying to get eyeballs on the screen. It's
not, you know. I mean I think that Anderson Cooper does a great job
of staying with stories and pushing them. New Orleans he really… He
was there and he pushed it past the point where his producers were
saying, "Listen, you've got to stop because people are tuning out
now. You know, we're on to another disaster." You know, what do you
worry about, Haiti, Chile, Turkey? What? You know where do you put
your attention and your focus? So for one person to really be able
to cover all that ground would be tough. Also I think that you know
you have experts in fields who spend their life studying one
thing. When an event goes on like that chances are they're going to
want that specific expert who has done it to be on the show talking
about it, not a writer or an artist of any sort, which I think is a
mistake because you know we don't have… I mean we have them, but
there is certainly not you know in strong force public philosophers
anymore. The only way you're going to get that kind of metaphorical
larger take on what is actually happening and what it means to us and
what it's going to mean in a few years is to talk to people whose job
it is to take life and turn it into stories and create it and frame
it. So it's a tough role to fill. I think that one of the things
that my dad was grappling with towards the end was how that shift had
happened now and he would go on a book tour and do his shows and it
would be you know fulfilling and good, but he wouldn't have the same
impact that he used to and it wasn't because people were less
interested. It's just because people are distracted by the million
different sources of entertainment and information in front of them
at any given time.
Question: If California legalizes marijuana, will the rest of the
nation follow?
John Buffalo Mailer: You know, there's a lot of forces opposed to
it, so I don't want to put the cart before the horse. It's looking
like it's going the legalization route, which, you know, a lot of
people thought it needs to for a long time outside of recreational
and medicinal use, just for crime reasons. You know, we're pumping
our prisons full of petty weed offenses and it's, you know, partially
to feed that industry, but it's not good. It's not good for society
and you know people go in there as a minor criminal and come out as a
real criminal. You know, it seems to be the sense that once you
throw guys in prison they're not going to come out. No, they're
going to come out and, you know, what kind of beast have you created
from that process? So, you know, we in 2004 when we were running
High Times we took it in a very political direction and it was like a
night and day transformation, probably too radical, honestly, in
terms of the timing of the business mechanics of it, but you know, we
were… We had one of the original pot-smugglers-turned-outlaw-rider
who had started the magazine there and he was a wild man, Richard
Stratton, and myself and Annie Nocenti, and we just said hey, we've
got a chance to really do what we want to do with this magazine, and
the response was great. I've got to say that people, you know, were
tickled to be reading High Times. Do you take it out on the
train? Do you not? Things like that, but overall they were saying
there is no other national magazine that we can get this kind of
information from because essentially High Times is a mom and pop
national magazine. There is no corporate structure that you have to
answer to. You know, so it's why I think it will always be
around. It's been around for over 30 years now.
So hopefully we played a small part in elevating the argument about
legalization, making it less, "Hey man, stay off my weed," to
"Listen, we shouldn't be putting people in jail for this. This is a
civil liberty issue. You know, do what you want to your body when
you're alone, as long as you're not hurting anyone else," and try to
take that tack on it. I think that probably the NORML organization
and Ethan Nadelmann are most responsible for what has been going
on. But, you know, having a mother who has had cancer and fought
through it and at times used cannabis to you know fight off nausea
and whatnot. I mean it's not really her thing, but there were times
when she needed it and the idea that you can't have it because it's
an illegal drug, but OxyContin is legal. That's you know that's just
insane to a level that I think most people understand.
Now, what's against legalization in a practical sense? You've got
the oil industry. You've got the cotton industry. You've got the
paper industry. You've got alcohol and tobacco to a certain
extent. All of these industries are affected adversely by
this. There is a storyI don't know if it's true, but it made sense
to methat William Randolph Hearst actually back in the '30s I guess
had just purchased whole fields and fields and fields of trees to
print his paper on and at the same time a couple of college kids
figured out how to take a hemp plant and turn it into newspaper and
it was actually a better quality of paper. It was cheaper and if you
plant hemp in a field it revitalizes the soil. You can grow food in
a dirt lot if you do enough harvest of hemp and Hearst said, "This is
going to put me out of business. I just spent all my money on these
trees." So that is why he started that campaign linking hemp and
marijuana together, calling it "the devil's harvest" and all
that. Again you know I read this story when I was at High Times. It
seemed like a legitimate source. Who knows if it's true or not, but
it makes sense and that is the kind of thing you're up against. I
think that the reason why pot is illegal is much more because of hemp
than it is for any societal reasons or stigma.
Question: Is there a sound economic argument for legalization?
John Buffalo Mailer: Absolutely there is. I mean, listen, we could
be taxing it and making a bundle off of it. You know, no, I don't
pretend to know the specifics of the economics of it to say how much
we'll be getting, but there is money to be made there that is not
being made because it's illegal. Now, granted, there is a lot of
money that is being made because it's illegal and those people you
would have to contend with as well, who are certainly not for it
becoming legal. You know, and then there's also just socially,
personally. There is something naughty about pot. There is
something that is rebellious and outlawish and a kind of, you know, a
finger in the eye of the government saying, hey, you can't tell me
what to do. That would be gone. I remember talking to my dad about
it in a book we did together called "The Big Empty." He was saying
like, "Oh, no, no, as soon as it's legalized it will be
ruined." "The corporations will get their hands on it. You'll have,
you know, pot with vitamin C and, you know, 'Viagratized High
Toke.'" You know different things like that. That it won't be, you
know, they'll put chemicals into it. It won't be that pure plant
that it is now. He may have a good point there. Although I think
that if you look at places like Amsterdam and places where pot is
very legal they do well with it. There is nothing taken away from it
and crime is very low and all that.
Question: What's it like to work at High Times?
John Buffalo Mailer: I'll put it to you this way. As wild as you
think it is, as wild as you imagine it isit's even wilder. Like it
is a crazy Willy Wonka-land environment to be running a magazine out
of, and truth be told, if what we were trying to pull off were to
work I think I was the wrong guy for it because I was 25 years
old. I was sent in first to kind of assess the staff and the team
and see who could stay and who could go with the shakeup. And, you
know, I'm a nicer guy than I should be in a lot of instances, but I
couldn't look at that, you know, 55-year-old advertising director
with the long ratty grey hair who would forget his teeth oftentimes
coming in and like, you know, I said, "Who are you?" And he's like,
"Oh, I'm your ad man." I thought, "Oh, we're fucked." And I couldn't
look at that guy and know that if I fired him he was going to lose
custody of his kid and probably wouldn't be able to get another job
anywhere else because he had been there for so long. That's not
something I wanted on my conscience, not something that I felt like
doing and I wasn't willing to sacrifice that for the greater good of
the magazine. If it was going to work we should have fired everybody
and brought in six people that had the same vision, knew what they
were doing and could do it. Instead I tried to kind of like get
everyone behind it and it worked... half. It half-worked. Half the
people were just too paranoid and scared of losing their jobs and so
were kind of, you know, putting on the happy face and the stuff going
on behind one's back was insane.
You know, I ended up walking away from that place with an
appreciation for the education that I've been given. I mean
essentially I got paid for a year or two to really learn magazine
publishing from top to bottom and inside and out and that has helped
me a lot. We were also a little ahead of our time because while we
took a huge hit on advertising… We couldn't, you know. There was
cultural advertising we couldn't have in with the new direction of
the magazine and didn't really have the time or abilities to fill
that in. We doubled the Web traffic and that was my sign. That was
kind of what I was using as my argument to say, "Hey, give it another
few years. This is going to work." Because back then they didn't
really understand what that meant and they didn't really see how
quickly everything is moving to the Web and how essentially print
magazines are going to be collector's items before we know it. As
each generation comes up that doesn't have the habits for paper it's
just easier and cheaper to get your stuff online. You know, people
go to what they're used to. Certainly our generation, you know,
we'll always want to have a magazine in our hands. We like that, but
they didn't see the value in that necessarily and you know they may
have been right for all I know because it was another few years until
really ad revenue starts to move to the websites. So you know so at
the end of the day it was an experiment. It was something that
hopefully sparked a few people to do similar things down the road and
will keep a certain flavor of magazine publishing alive. I have to
say at the end of the day I am glad not to be spending all day, every
day in the High Times office, you know, covering this particular angle of life.
Question: What harshes your mellow?
John Buffalo Mailer: What harshes my mellow? Well I just had a
movie that was set and ready to go with amazing stars and an amazing
director and an amazing producer and everyone and, because of a
technicality unfortunately the whole thing just fell apart. That
harshed my mellow a little bit. But again, you know if you're going
to go into the movie business it is so full of heartbreak and you get
so close and it doesn't happen and then once in a while it works out
and it is the fantasy, like it is that dream. So riding the highs
and lows of it you got to have an iron constitution and you got to be
able to do what David Dinkins actually one saidwho, you know, who
was a mayor of New York back in the early '90s, late '80s, and had a
rough time. You know, one day after another it was something and
actually my father was talking to him and he said, "So you know, Mr.
Dinkins, how do you navigate it all?" And he said, "Well you know
some days are good, some days are bad, but anytime there is a bad day
I know the next day is going to be good and vice versa, so you just
can't put too much stock in that moment." I think that ultimately
when life is not tragedy it should be a party and if you've faced the
real stuff, if you've faced the ones closest to you being at death's
door, passing on, you know, not to let the small stuff really harsh
your mellow, as you put it.
.
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