How to Sustain the Writing Life, with Travis Andrews

TRAVIS ANDREWS IS A staff writer for The Washington Post Style section, where he works on the pop culture team and covers music, movies, television, comedy and celebrity culture, and he is the author of the brand new book Because He’s Jeff Goldblum: The Movies, Memes and Meaning of Hollywood’s Most Enigmatic Actor. Travis writes full time and is the perfect person to ask about how to sustain the writing life. Listen in and read along as we discuss that and so much more.

Marion: Welcome, Travis.

Travis: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Marion: I’m delighted you’re here. You joined The Washington Post in 2016. Prior to that, you were an associate travel and culture editor for Southern Living and a contributing pop culture reporter from Mashable and The Week. You’ve also written for Time, Esquire, GQ, the Atlantic and a bunch of other places. My audience is writers and they want to know how to become writers, sustain the writing life and keep the energy in that life. So your beat these days is perhaps not what you envisioned when you started out as a writer. It’s hard to imagine a little kid saying to oneself, “When I grow up, I want to cover internet culture.” So what did you say to yourself at the beginning of your career?

Travis: When I was younger, I just loved reading. I was a avid reader, anything I could get my hands on, fiction mostly, and I just knew I wanted to write. And so in high school I joined the newspaper and I joined the lit mag. And when I got to college, I found out you could write for the newspaper and they would pay you. And that seemed pretty cool. And I, at that point, loved music and I really wanted to be a rock critic. It seemed like a way you could write for a living, while you maybe work on your novel in the background.

And so I started writing about music and my college paper became interested in other types of art, and then realized that I really liked cultural criticism. And that seemed like something that maybe I would want to be able to do for a living. And eventually I got to do it. And during the pandemic, I was asked to fill a gap we had at The Post to cover internet culture. I was reporting just on pop culture before that. And what I quickly realized is that the internet touches on every aspect of our lives, every aspect of culture, and is a great way, a great lens, into all of life. So not where I expected to end up, but certainly glad that I have.

Marion: Well, we’re glad too. I remember an editor that I had years ago in the science section of The New York Times, referring to me as her, “Oh gosh, oh, golly, writer,” meaning that I’m going to jump on things and go, “Oh my God, look at that.” And I love that reference to me. And I think you’ve got that right amount of, “Oh gosh, oh, golly,” meets, “Oh, come on.” It’s a great tone you have. So how did you tune it to something so discordant and capricious as pop culture?

Travis: Well, thank you so much. I often think about pop culture in two minds. I hold two ideas in my head at the same time. One is that pop culture, I think, is an incredibly important force in our lives, both individually and as a culture, because actively or passively, we are constantly consuming this stuff. Even if we don’t mean to, if you’re at the doctor’s office, you see “Law and Order,” you see People magazine, and this stuff is just constantly coming into our senses. And I think that there is an instinct a lot of people have to downplay it and say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter because it’s silly actors and silly TV shows,” et cetera, et cetera.

On the other hand, I think it’s possible to quickly treat it in an overblown matter and think that it matters more than it does. And what I try to do is both take it seriously while remembering that at its heart, the reason we consume it and the reason so many people like it is that it’s fun, it’s entertaining. And maybe it’s Trojan horsing things, you know, ideas and et cetera into us, and maybe it’s not. And I think that’s a tricky line to walk and one that I try to, both taking it seriously enough, but also being able to say, “Okay, come on. This is only what it is,” if that makes any sense.

Marion: It makes perfect sense. And I can give a great example of where you do that wonderfully. There’s a perfectly terrific 2019 piece of yours on the missing Oscars in which you compile what you call, “The definitive accounting of the 37 living actors deprived of an academy award.” And in one of those 37 snippets, you list Annette Bening in her role in 20th Century Women as missing an Oscar. And here’s your lead for that listing, “Want to hear a joke? Hilary Swank has two Oscars. Want to hear a better one? She beat out the goddess Annette Bening for both of them.”

Well, that must’ve been fun as hell to write. So let’s talk about delighting yourself when you write. Is that a good goal? Is it dangerous territory? Is it just the occasional by-product of good writing? What is it when we write something? I mean, you have to have laughed out loud after you wrote that, and I hope you did. But it can also be a pothole trying to just only delight yourself, right?

Travis: Absolutely. First off, let me just give my apologies to Hilary Swank, although I think she’s probably doing okay.

Marion: Yeah, I think she’s fine.

Travis: And to Brad Pitt who was on that list and has since won an Oscar. So Brad, we can take you off if we should update that.

It’s a really good question. I think you’re absolutely right. That if you write only for yourself, that can be a pothole and that can lead you into a dangerous territory. At the same time, what I try to do is when I finish a piece, I go back and I read it and I say, “Would I have finished reading this piece if I hadn’t written it? Would I get through this? Would I care?” And I try to keep in mind that, to some degree, especially the topics I write about, there is usefulness in being entertaining and delighting a reader while also maybe saying something a little bit more serious. And that’s always been my goal to be able to entertain while maybe saying something more. And that’s where the fun comes in. And since writing can be lonely, you are writing with an audience in mind, but it’s hard to always picture that audience, but you know what you like. And so I just try to write something that I’d want to read. And at times I’m sure it gets too self-indulgent, but that’s what editors are for.

Marion: Yeah, I love that word, “entertain.” I mean, it’s such dangerous territory. Some people really treat it like something to spit out, like it’s not a good thing to entertain people. I think it’s a very good thing to entertain people. My dad was a writer. He used to say to me all the time, “If you want anyone to remember anything, either make it funny or put it to music.” And he wasn’t being literal, he was being instructive. And there’s so much in good cultural writing that teaches us. I work with writers all the time, and one of the hardest things to get writers to understand is that things are not about the plot line. That good story is about something universal and the plot line is the delivery of that. And so I tell them to read cultural criticism, yours included, and read movie reviews, read book reviews, which always talk about what the story is about.

And there’s a great example in a piece you wrote on the difficulties of adapting Stephen King for the screen, specifically his work, The Outsider. And you write about the obvious issues when adapting him, the lengths of his pieces sometimes are behemoths or short stories. The risk of showing the master too much respect, but then you have this lovely little line when you write of something that is the payday for someone like me, who’s reading to be educated about what things were about and how to discern that when you write. You write, “Therein lies one of the primary challenges in adapting King’s work, taking something so interior, in this case doubt, and making it visual.” And I said to myself, “Right, that story, The Outsider, that is a lot about doubt, isn’t it? Oh, wow.” Let’s talk about that I, that ear. How do you learn not to get caught up in your plot and to think more deeply about material, to be the kind of critic, the kind of cultural reporter that you are?

Travis: Well, whatever I’m focusing on a particular work or a particular person… let’s say a particular work. When I’m looking at something like The Outsider, which is a Stephen King novel that was very good, a recent one that was adapted for an HBO series. I like to think about why he created it in the first place. I don’t think any writer, or any artists at all, feels like they have a neat idea and that is enough to compel them to sit down and actually create the art that they’re creating. So there’s got to be something behind it. There’s got to be some reason, something driving a person to create something. And that’s what I try to do, is just look at maybe what that thing is. And in this case, I think King was exploring doubt.

And I think often you don’t even have to look that deeply, you just have to tune your brain to pay attention to that sort of thing. Because it’s there and you just have to… I think about the David Foster Wallace water speech, where he talks about the two fish swimming in the water. The older one comes by and says, “How’s the ocean, boys?” And they say, “What’s the ocean?” and he says, “You’re in it.” I think so much in most art, it’s not hidden oftentimes, the meaning behind it or the intention behind it. I think that we are just trained from a young age, from television and from film, to pay more attention to the plot. So I just try to pay attention to the ocean.

Marion: Lovely, lovely answer, and such a good piece of advice. Think about why he created it in the first place is what you said. So I obviously have to ask you that question about why you created in the first place your new book, Because He’s Jeff Goldblum: The Movies, Memes and Meaning of Hollywood’s Most Enigmatic Actor. I mean, you knew that was going to happen. I was going to pivot around and turn that question on you. It’s just out from Plume books, a division of Penguin. How and when did you discern that Jeff Goldblum had the kind of cultural resonance that met your talent where it needed to go next? Because I mean, that’s kind of the thing, isn’t it, some topics are obvious books, but we have to meet the topic where we are as writers. And I mean, I’d love to write a biography of Emily Dickinson, for instance, I love her work, but I’m no biographer. So how did you recognize that this was the topic for you?

Travis: In a way, I didn’t, in a way I did and in a way I didn’t. So it’s a funny story. And I think it also illuminates a lot about the world of writing, particularly in today’s world. So Jeff Goldblum was coming out with his first jazz album and I was at The Washington Post as pop culture reporter. And I knew people loved Goldblum. I liked him well enough. I’d seen the big movies and when this album was coming out, people were going crazy about it on the internet. I remember my colleagues and I were all talking and I said, genuinely, “Why do people like this guy so much? What is it about Goldblum that people like?” And we were deciding who was going to cover the news that this album was coming out. And my editor was like, “There you go, write that. Write about why people love Goldblum.”

And so I did, I wrote a piece for The Post exploring it. And maybe it was a couple of months later, I got a call from my agent, Laurie Abkemeier, and she was not my agent at the time. And she called me up, cold-called me, and said, “I read this piece. I’ve been looking for someone to write a book on Goldblum and I think you have the perfect way and the perfect voice.” And it was such one of those curve ball moments life throws at you where I had been wanting to write a book for a long time and it had never occurred to me to write a book about Jeff Goldblum. But she was right. I was interested enough, and I thought it was an interesting enough topic to explore. And I still, in my Washington Post piece did not get to the heart of why do people love Jeff Goldblum?

So I said, “Sure, why not? Let’s do this. Let’s dive in and find out why this person who was an A List star in the nineties, but really doesn’t even appear in that many films, he makes jazz albums. And yet is one of the most famous people in the world still today. Why is that? And that question fascinated me. And when Laurie called and gave me this chance of a lifetime, I said, “Yes, I have to take this. I have to explore this, and so I did.

Marion: Yeah, you really did. You ask us, in some of your online promotional material, you ask us to remember the first time we ran into him. Some people, it’s “The Big Chill.” I saw “The Big Chill,” I don’t remember him in “The Big Chill.” For me, I’ll answer the question, it was “Earth Girls Are Easy.” I just said to myself, anyone that can make that movie is somebody I just really like. I mean, that movie has no purpose culturally, perhaps, or value in terms of moving along the human existence on earth. It’s just plain hilarious and fun. So do you remember the first time you came in contact with him? I mean, you skipped past that part, but do you remember the first time you actually saw him in a movie?

Travis: Oh, I do. And it haunted me, actually. It was the opposite of “Earth Girls Are Easy.” He’s very appealing in “Earth Girls Are Easy.” I saw him as a small child in “The Fly.” I didn’t see the whole movie, but I just saw a couple scenes of him falling apart and his ears coming off, and I had nightmares for months. And that was my introduction to Jeff Goldblum, which is so funny because I think when people think about Jeff Goldblum, they have positive thoughts. He’s very attractive. He’s very charming and charismatic. And yet my intro into this guy was his body literally falling apart and having nightmares. And it was later that I finally saw him in “Jurassic Park” and “Independence Day,” and changed my feelings about him. But yeah, I was a small child and we had a babysitter and I guess she was watching it and I couldn’t sleep, so I walked into the room and saw that and was haunted for a while.

Marion: That’ll do it to you, absolutely. And that’s a pretty wonderful thing to get over, to be the author of such a book. You worked hard on this book. The interviews are extensive and you’re creating this 360 around the actor, but it is absolutely not a biography by any definition that I would use. So let’s talk about how you conduct the kind of interviews to get what you need to write the kind of book you want, and how you decided what this book was. It was chicken and the egg. Did you decide to interview these people because you wanted to find out these specific things or did you decide it’s not a biography so I want to do the interview process this way. Because it’s not a biography. Would you agree? I mean, I think you would agree, right?

Travis: Absolutely, I would agree. It’s full of biographical details, of course, but it is not a strict biography. I started more with the idea, when I sat down to write this book and I thought about, “What do people want to know about Jeff Goldblum?” It seemed to me, and hopefully I’m correct on this, but it seemed to me that people probably don’t really care which street he grew up in, or who was his seventh grade teacher, these basic biographical details. What’s alluring about Jeff Goldblum is this enigmatic persona that he has, is this larger than life, not even a caricature, because I think he’s truly authentic in who he is, but we look at him and we say, “That is a person unlike anyone I know.”

He wears these crazy thousand dollar Prada shirts. He plays jazz music weekly. He has a career that makes absolutely no sense going from huge movies in the nineties. He could have continued doing that if he chose to, but he didn’t. He just did whatever his whim suggested that he should do next. And that has led to some very strange places. And I thought, no one wants to just read a strict biography of that person. They want to get a feel, a sense of that magic that he has. And I wanted to recreate that in text, and I don’t quite know what you’d call what I’ve written. It’s part biography, part rumination, part celebration of Jeff Goldblum.

So I had that idea. And for the interviews I decided, let’s start reaching out with just people he’s worked with. And everyone started saying the same thing, “Jeff Goldblum is a wonderful, wonderful, authentic person. What you see is what you get.” And what you see is odd and different, but it’s true. And that really excited me. I mean, I don’t think it’s crazy to say that these haven’t been the easiest few years for everybody and to have something in someone who just felt like a pure sense of joy, that seemed great. So I really wanted to capture that and that’s what I tried to do.

And again, it’s so hard to overstate how many people just adore Jeff Goldblum who have worked with him. Everyone was just gushing. Even if someone said something negative, they would immediately follow it up with, “Oh, but he’s great.” And so I just really wanted to put that joy on the page, and I hope that I have.

Marion: Well, you have. I mean, even Publishers Weekly refers to the book as “a lark,” and it made me smile thinking that something that delights a writer can become a book that a major publisher would agree to print. So let’s unpack that just a little bit more. The full quote by PW gives it more context and it’s affectionate and appreciative. I mean, it’s not saying the book is not important, it’s saying it’s a lark and I love that word.

So let’s talk just a little bit about writing a lark. I think it’s a nice word. And I think it is what the book is. It’s delightful and you’re right, right now, can we please have some delight? So along the way of this magic carpet of people explaining him to you, did you get caught up in that delightful sense of, he is who he is, he’s enigmatic, he’s himself. And did that drive the writing because PW picked up on it, that’s for sure.

Travis: Absolutely, it drove the writing. Whenever I sit down to write about a subject, I try to capture the essence of that subject. I think that’s what good cultural criticism often does. It doesn’t mean the voice has to be the subject’s voice, but you want to capture that essence. And the more and more people I spoke to, the more and more it became clear that Goldblum was just this pleasure to be around, and very funny and very generous. And I wanted that to be in the writing. One story that I heard from so many people that to me worked as a metaphor for what I was trying to do with the book is, when Jeff Goldblum was starting out his career, he was in Robert Altman’s Nashville. Ironically, he doesn’t speak in the entire movie, which Goldblum’s a very gregarious guy, so that’s a funny aside.

But while he was preparing for this role, Altman wanted him to learn a bunch of magic tricks. And in the movie he does one trick, but he learned several and he doesn’t get to do most of them in the movie. And Goldblum was the kind of guy who just loved learning about things and learning new skills, but he also liked to use them. So he had this rope trick that he learned for the movie and he didn’t get to perform. And so whenever he would be on a set, no matter what the role, he would try to work the rope trick into the role. And he liked to show everyone this magic trick. And I had so many directors say, “We had to be like, Jeff, this is a very serious moment in this play or movie, the rope magic trick really isn’t fitting.”

And he would be super agreeable and say, “Oh, okay then. I had to try.” And I just loved that, that he would go around just showing people this magic trick and in the end, got it into a few movies. So I don’t know, that to me was what I was trying to do with this book. He learned something, it delighted him and he wanted to show everyone else. And I wanted to do the same thing.

Marion: Well, it seems very much a characterization of you and your work. There’s a lot of that in your work. And it’s so deeply appreciated at this point by this reader anyway, I have to tell you.

So as we start to wrap this up, give me your sense of the Jeff Goldblum memes. I mean, huh? Why is his face on everything? And if anyone listening to this doesn’t know, just go to Google, or your favorite search engine, and type in, “Jeff Goldblum meme,” and sit back because you’re about to be astonished by how much he represents. Well, he seems to represent everything. So why is that? Why is he so accessible as a meme?

Travis: I think there’s a few different reasons. I think one reason is practical, is that a lot of the people who make memes, and were in that early internet age, were people who grew up when Jeff Goldblum was an A List star. So there’s this immediate connection of remembering him as this very famous person. And then there’s the Goldblum iness of it all to borrow a phrase. He is a striking person, six foot four, a very expressive face, and a very odd person who likes to make strange facial expressions and say whimsical things and wear very colorful and patterned clothing. And he really stands out. And that, I think, really lends itself to meme making. It’s something that catches the eye that’s instantly recognizable.

And I think when people see Goldblum, they feel certain things. One of them just being this delight and that really works well for memes, particularly when you’re making just humorous fun ones that you want people to share around. People want to share this guy. They want to put him out there and they delight in his presence. And I think that combined with just the people who were making memes was perfect, and then it just really caught on.

Marion: Well, it does really catch on and it makes the perfect subject for a book. I’m so grateful that you’re the one that got to write it. And I’m so grateful that you came along today to talk about it.

Thank you, Travis. It’s been a joy talking with you.

Travis: Well, thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun. I really appreciate it.

Marion: Well, you’re welcome. The author is Travis Andrews. The book is Because He’s Jeff Goldblum: The Movies, Memes and Meaning of Hollywood’s Most Enigmatic Actor. See more on the writer at travis m andrews dot com.

I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced at Overit Studios in Albany New York, reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont, our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing, visit marionroach.com and take a class with me on how to write memoir.

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