InDigest Magazine’s ongoing series of writers and artists talking to each other about whatever the
hell they want to talk to each other about continues here with fiction writers
and InDigest contributors Sam Osterhout and Meakin Armstrong. Sam is currently producing a live old-time radio drama called Radio Happy Hour (premiering at New York City’s (Le) Poisson Rouge in June) and pitching a TV series, while Meakin is at work
on a number of different pieces, both fiction and nonfiction, that are forcing
(or allowing) him to take a break from his novel-in-progress, and reading other
people’s fiction for Guernica Magazine, where he is the fiction editor.
These two writers caught up online via Gchat—with a couple of days in between discussions—to get to the bottom of the fate of the funny man, growing old and peeing in
public, and why Meakin’s characters don’t have enough sense to get themselves out of the damn basement without his help.
An Online Dialogue in Two Parts
Part I
Sam: 2:30 on the nose. Or close.
Meakin: I hope you're not a fast or accurate typist.
Sam: Neither fast, nor accurate.
Meakin: Thank god. I'm the typo king. . . anyway, I suppose we should talk about
something, well, literary. Who are you?
Sam: I'm just a man, Meakin. Just. A. Man. That was fiction.
Meakin: Oh good. Most people when they see my name aren't aware than I too am
just a man. Should I challenge you to a fight?
Sam: I'm also a writer. Which is to say I'm not terribly effective in a
fistfight. It would be in your best interest to challenge me, but not in mine.
Plus I broke my toe this morning.
Meakin: Whoa! Broken toe! Sorry.
Sam: It looks pretty bad. I'm not going to the doctor, though, because I don't
think there's anything that can be done with a broken toe. But it got me
thinking about story.
Meakin: Well, tape it to another toe. That's what Guernica [Magazines]'s poetry
editor and InDigest contributor Erica I think is doing. She broke her toe a
week or so ago, I hear.
What story? One you want to write? Sounds like a better story than mine: working
on something in suburbia. (By the way, I don't fight. Use sarcasm. Stuff like,
Hey fatty!)
Sam: I say stuff like that, too, but I say it either really softly or from a
great distance.
Meakin: I only really shout at Republicans.
Sam: It didn't get me thinking about a particular story, just story in general.
I've been working up this tv series project, and I've been struggling with the
"moment," the crisis, etc. I've been watching all these terrible indie films
lately that don't have a moment or a purpose but just try to convey feelings or
large generalizations.
Boring.
Breaking my toe was a moment. I got hit by a car once while I was on my bike,
and that was a moment, too. The guy who hit me was a Republican. I gave him a
tongue lashing. Very quietly.
Meakin: TV series? Cool. I never pitched one. My MFA is in film, not creative
writing, like people always think. I pitched crap left and right. And went
through the development thing. Wasn't a fan. I turned out preferring to just
write stuff in pretty little stories.
Congrats on the tongue lashing.
A moment that changes events? That kind of a moment? I've always lacked moments.
Sam: Exactly. I was on the floor this morning, rolling around in agony after
having kicked the living shit out of the door (accidentally), and all I could
think was, "What does this event signify?"
Actually, what I was really thinking was, "So this is how I'm going to die."
Meakin: Signify? You ARE a writer. Anyone else would just scream.
Sam: And then I thought, "Who can I blame for this?" (I blamed the door)
Meakin: Blame. You're getting older.
Sam: It's liberating somehow.
Meakin: I can't wait for stretch pants.
Sam: Elastic? We've earned it. That's a moment. I was held up in traffic once by
an old man who had pulled his Cadillac over and was pissing in the street. He
earned that, too. He looked so happy.
Meakin: I think in Syd Field's book on screenwriting, you're supposed to have an
allegorical moment on page 45 of the screenplay. I think it's 45. Are you
writing a series like that?
I saw an old man piss on an ATM. I respected it.
Sam: I guess he was making a deposit. Hey O!
I am going to put an allegory on page 45 in my series. Or a parable. The one
about fish.
Meakin: When you're old with a broken toe taped to another toe, you've earned
the right to piss anywhere. Have a moment, Sam. Go piss on the street.
Fish? Share?
Sam: I figure there's a parable about fish somewhere out there. I haven't
completed my research yet. At any rate, when I'm done you'll find it on page
45.
Meakin: Good. Then there's the point of no return. Or something like that. I
think that's like 85. I forget. Anyway, you know, guy wants something and is
now too committed to turn back. Like us, you and me, right now.
You do a radio show or something, right?
Sam: I did one in Minneapolis for several years—it was more of a live show that happened to be broadcast. I'm producing another
such show in New York this summer. At our favorite, (le) Poisson Rouge. The one
this summer will be like a modern, New York version of Hee Haw.
Meakin: I loved Hee Haw as a kid. I grew up in Japan, my grandparents lived in a
small town in the south. When we visited them for Christmas and stuff, we'd
watch Hee-Haw. "Gloom, despair, and agony on me..."
Sam: I watched Hee Haw clips on YouTube for an hour yesterday.
Meakin: I was like 8, and loved the women with big hair and all that stupid joke
stuff.
Sam: That must have been an amazing way to experience the U.S. as an American
kid not living in America.
My aunts and uncles loved [Hee Haw], but I was too "city" for it (I lived in the
county seat). We had a mall.
Meakin: It was [an amazing way to experience America]. All I know about America,
I learned from Hee Haw. Maybe I should claim Hee Haw made me a writer. It'd
sound good on a book jacket.
Sam: Were the Smothers Brothers ever on that show?
Meakin: Doubt it. I think they were considered too sophisticated. I think they
were against the Vietnam war. And Hee Haw would have been "support the troops."
And cheap. Hee Haw was cheap. I never saw Smother Brothers, though, so I know
nothing.
Sam: They were also pretty hokey, but I loved them. Very classic.
