0:06Hello, this is Clive Priddle, and this is The Current.
0:07And today, I'm joined by Shea Serrano.
0:10Hello, Shea, thank you for coming.
0:12What up, boss?
0:15So you are, um, you're, uh, you're a man of many enthusiasms, many of which you've managed to, um, draw on for your books.
0:23And you've got a book out all about the movies, I wanted just to start off there.
0:27Tell us a little bit about, um, why you wanted to write about the movies and what it was that excited you about that.
0:33I really like movies, it's like a a thing I spent a lot of my time with growing up on.
0:38All of the things that I have chosen to write about for my books, rap, basketball, movies to this point, were all things that like meant a lot to me growing up, because I feel like if I'm going to spend two years of my life working on a, on a particular project,
0:53um, number one, it's going to make it a little more palatable if it's something that I've that I already like, but number two, it just makes writing about it more enjoyable if I have like a a little bit of history baked in already.
1:05Like I'll give you a perfect example, I'm I was writing today for the new book that I'm working on, which will come out next year, which is about rap music.
1:10And I was writing about this video for a song called Make 'em Say uh by Master P, which came out when I was in high school.
1:18And this was like, this this was like a a very big part of my life was the the like back half of high school, for the first time ever we got cable at my house, we never had cable before, so we had cable, and I had a like a small TV in my room, so in the morning when I was getting ready, you could turn on MTV and they would be playing, you know, whatever videos were popular at the time, and there was a stretch where this video, Make 'em Say Uh, was extremely popular, so every morning I would turn on MTV, I'd be getting ready for school, the song comes on, I sit there, I watch the video, again, it's all of the things I like, it's on a TV, it's rap, it's basketball, all at once, and it just was like, had a special place in my heart.
1:42So I knew when I was writing this book,
1:44there's going to be a section in there about this particular thing.
1:47Even if that was like not a big thing for a lot of people, for me it was, so I'm going to write about it, I'm going to be excited about it, and then hopefully somebody will read it, and if they didn't feel that way about that particular video, they probably felt that way about a video of some sort, so they should be able to read it and they'll be like, oh, I get it.
1:57This was like his version of my thing or whatever.
2:00You know what I'm saying?
2:00So that's that's usually why I'm trying to just like pick out the stuff that I like.
2:03That's how I ended up with the with the movie book.
2:06What I loved about your your movie book was that every chapter was like a a friendly argument waiting to happen.
2:11Um, you know, you you put your point of view out there.
2:14And you're kind of teasing the rest of us to come back at you.
2:18I was I was went for your list of, uh, of gangster movies,
2:21you know, and I I started to say, well, you know, why do we have to start with The Godfather?
2:27Why, surely there must have been a a gangster movie before The Godfather?
2:31Um, Robert Mitchum and all this.
2:35But it it's your point, it's kind of these are your guys, aren't they?
2:39These are the the guys that spoke to you.
2:42Yeah, yeah.
2:43I'm just trying to celebrate the stuff that I like.
2:48Um, in ways that I think are are interesting.
2:52But yeah, hopefully
2:55the the point of the books is never to be like raining down knowledge from the mountaintop, you know what I'm saying?
3:05Like this is the only way to be, it's not that, it's supposed to be like, here's the stuff that I like.
3:10Let me tell you why I like it.
3:12And we might we we may be will agree on a couple of things, but largely we're going to disagree on pretty much all of this stuff.
3:19And that's usually how conversations work or the most interesting forms of conversations anyway.
3:24We're about a month, well, less than, just about a month after from the presidential election.
3:30And I wanted to ask you about politics, if I may.
3:33Um, how, how do you think, what's going to happen in Texas, let's start there, Texas, we're told is is getting closer each time, but each time the Republicans win it again, uh, is it going to change this time?
3:45I hope it does.
3:47It probably won't.
3:50But I hope it does.
3:51We're trying every trick we can think of.
3:55To like activate this Democratic voter base here.
3:58I think what you're doing is you're doing everything according to the law and absolutely no trickery so that he can call the result into doubt.
4:03Yeah.
4:04Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:07Right along there.
4:09Right along there.
4:12Um,
4:14but yeah, I, you know, I I always have my fingers crossed that we're going to get our shit together.
4:22And then we usually don't.
4:24But who knows?
4:27Maybe this is the year.
4:28And I listen, I know, I know you don't want to speak for every, uh,
4:33uh, Latin X in the country.
4:37Oh, I will.
4:38I will.
4:39Okay, good.
4:40Good.
4:40All right.
4:41So you can.
4:43They told me it was okay.
4:44How how's the vote going to go?
4:47How do you think, uh, the the that constituency is feeling about the choice they've got in front of them?
4:57I we don't feel especially good about either one of them, but we certainly feel worse about Trump.
5:05Clearly he is the the like worst option here.
5:10Just bad in every single way.
5:13Every single bad thing you could think of is Donald Trump.
5:18So we're trying to make sure that all of the Latinos, even the even my Cuban homies in Florida, who are super Republican,
5:28we're like, hey, come on over to the other side over here.
5:32Because we got to.
5:34It's just not working.
5:36Clearly it's not working, the way that things have gone, it's not working.
5:41I hope they hear you.
5:43I'm trying to I'm trying to tell them every day.
5:50Uh, and if if Biden gets in,
5:54um, because I think if Trump gets in, you know,
6:00we have no idea what's going to happen.
6:01But if Biden gets in,
6:05you know, he has to pay a little attention to, uh, all the groups of people who brought him in.
6:12And and, um, the Latin X voters is going to be a big group.
6:19So what do you think they're going to want from him?
6:22How does he show good faith to those voters?
6:27Oh shoot, you probably have like a list of.
6:30Not necessarily demands, but a list of things we would be.
6:35We would be looking for.
6:38I mean, really,
6:41I don't think anything changes.
6:45Honestly, I don't think it.
6:47I don't think it changes if we if he gets in a year from now, maybe we maybe we get better by you know, our lives are two percent better.
6:58The the Latinos I'm talking about specifically.
7:01Like all that stuff is just so baked in to the to the structures in America that it's hard to see it changing.
7:11But like,
7:12I don't know, an easy one.
7:14An easy one like if we can just pick a thing, which it should be easy.
7:19It should be much easier if you are like on DACA, which have a path to citizenship.
7:24Cool.
7:25Like there you go.
7:26There's a big one.
7:27If you do that, that would be fucking awesome.
7:31That would be great.
7:33You can screw up the the whole rest of the time, but if we got that in place, cool, great, we're feeling wonderful.
7:40So if he puts Julian Castro in charge of homeland security, that would feel better than whatever we've got right now.
7:46Yeah, let let Julian do whatever he wants, just put him in there.
7:52At least, can we at least get somebody on Saturday Night Live to play Julian?
7:57Like can we include him in that?
7:59At the very least, at the very least.
8:01Can we do that, please?
8:02How do you feel about the the other work that you do, because you you love to write about sports and culture in general.
8:11Um, how's the media landscape at the moment treating you and other writers like you?
8:19Do you feel, do you feel it's it's okay, is it stable, are you getting space to write about what you you want to write about?
8:26I'm in a very fortunate position.
8:30Uh, I work at this website called The Ringer.
8:32Yeah.
8:32Which is a pop culture website that pretty much they cover all of the things that I'm interested in.
8:40So because I work there, I have the the platform, that's a word everybody uses, I have the platform to write about the stuff that I like, to celebrate the stuff that I like.
8:49Um, I have the ability to do that, I get to collect the paycheck.
8:55Me, you know.
8:56Media is very stratified.
8:57You've got different groups, some some groups are are not being paid as much as they should.
9:02Other ones are, like it's all broken up like that.
9:07I I got lucky, I'm in a good good spot.
9:10I enjoy where I work.
9:13But it all it it's always a tricky question to answer because it's everything is in flux at all times.
9:22Probably during this call, two more media companies may be shut down and then two other new ones like cell phone sorts of things popped up.
9:30Like it's all it's always changing.
9:32all of those those parts of it, but at the moment I feel, I feel good about my own personal situation, I suppose.
9:44And your books, uh, are, um, they're very beautiful.
9:50Uh, you you work with Arturo Torres.
9:54Yeah.
9:55You work with him on several projects.
9:57I really like the way that you uh, you illustrate that you blend the words and the uh,
10:02and the pictures.
10:03How did that collaboration get going?
10:06You know that collaboration got started, it got started by procrastination.
10:12That's what happened.
10:13What happened is uh I I signed a deal to write a book.
10:18A book that came out in 2015 called The Rap Year Book.
10:21It was like the first proper book that I'd done.
10:25And when you sign a deal to write a book,
10:28they give you some money.
10:31Uh, they gave me $25,000 to write this book.
10:33I thought I was fucking rich.
10:35I this is the richest I'd ever been in my life.
10:38$25,000, sure, like this is before taxes.
10:43Before your agent takes out their piece or whatever.
10:46But whatever.
10:47They gave me the money and they're like, you signed a contract.
10:51You have a year to turn in this book.
10:54I said, all right, cool.
10:56That's like that's no problem.
10:59Because before then, when you're like our pitching book as part of a proposal, you have to write one or two chapters.
11:08So I had already written two chapters.
11:11And those chapters took me like two days to write.
11:15Because I just picked something that I already knew about.
11:17And I'd done research for.
11:19Whatever, so they told me.
11:21I have a year to write the book.
11:23And I look and I'm like, okay, well, this thing is going to be 35 chapters.
11:28I've already done two.
11:30It took me two days.
11:31I don't need a fucking year to do this.
11:33I can do this in two months.
11:35Easy.
11:35So I just waited.
11:37I just didn't do anything.
11:39I cashed my check.
11:41And then I just sat there and did nothing.
11:44You're the first writer ever to do that, let me tell you.
11:47It's to cash a check and do nothing.
11:48I did nothing for eight months.
11:52And then at the eight-month mark, the editor, my editor at the time, someone named Samantha, emailed me and she's like, hey, send me all the chapters that you have.
12:00We're getting close to the thing.
12:02I want to get started.
12:03And I was like, oh, you already have all the chapters that I've done.
12:06I haven't done anything yet.
12:08But don't worry, I got it.
12:10And then I sat down to write one of them.
12:12And it was the first time that I was writing a chapter that I had not already done the research for, and it didn't take me a day, it took me like two and a half weeks because I had to read some books, and I had to watch some documentaries, and I had to like learn how to search stuff in the archives and find old magazines and do all of this.
12:23It just kicked my ass.
12:24So I very quickly realized I was not going to make the deadline now.
12:29And when I signed the deal, I had signed it to not only write, but also to illustrate it myself, because I'd done some illustrative work.
12:38In the past, and it wasn't going to happen.
12:41And I was like, well, now I need to hire an illustrator so that they can work while I'm working.
12:47And I was on the hunt, looking for people who are doing things in like cooler, interesting ways.
12:54I happen to cross this totally by accident, this flyer for a rap group that I follow out of Dallas, Texas, called The Outfit.
13:03They were like doing a a local show or something.
13:06I saw the art and I was like, oh, that's exactly what I'm looking for, kind of comic booky, but not really comic booky.
13:14Like some there's weird in between space that had a lot of texture to it.
13:19So I reached out to them.
13:22Uh, they connected me to their manager, she connected me to the illustrator.
13:27This guy named Arturo Torres, who at the time, he didn't really have an internet presence.
13:32He's he was a kid, he was 23 years old, I think, he was working like at a at an Urban Outfitters, maybe or something like that.
13:38Just sort of doing this on the side.
13:42And I finally got him on the phone and talked to him about what I wanted to do.
13:46And then that's how it started.
13:48I gave him a little bit of money, he drew a bunch of pictures real fast.
13:53And then after that, I was like, number one, I thought it was cool because he was Mexican.
13:57And there are very few Mexicans in the like the the journalism space and the and the publication book publication space.
14:07Like you just don't find a lot of them.
14:10So I was really excited about that.
14:13Also, he lives in Texas, too, he lives, you know, a couple hours away.
14:16I was excited about that.
14:19Um, all of the pieces just seem to fit.
14:23So I just keep on hiring them for stuff and hopefully he keeps on saying yes.
14:29So you know, there's been a big debate in publishing, a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of introspection about how open or not publishing is.
14:39Uh, a lot of people, I think, hearing that you were paid $25,000 for your first book,
14:43will say, well, there you go, that's a perfect example.
14:47If it had been somebody else, they'd have got much more money than that.
14:51Here's here's a Mexican American guy and and he's working for,
14:54you know,
14:55for peanuts.
14:56Did do you think that's right, I mean, do you feel that you you had to struggle to get into publishing?
15:01Or do you feel you just you you got a break, you got in, and then you made the best of it once you got there?
15:07I mean, how tell me.
15:08You put your words on the experience.
15:10I I got I got very lucky.
15:13Um, like with that book, for example.
15:17That wasn't even my idea for the book.
15:20It was the editor, Samantha's her idea.
15:23thing she had wanted to do and she asked me to if I had any interest.
15:29And writing it, but yeah, it is absolutely closed off.
15:32It's like very hard to.
15:36You can't live off of that.
15:38I I had when I was writing that book, I had already had two kids.
15:44It was me, Laremy, my wife and and two sons, it's it's impossible to survive.
15:49On two 25,000 over two years before taxes.
15:57Um, there's just there's just no way.
15:59I was teaching, I was coaching, I was freelance writing other places, and I was doing the book all at the same time.
16:07Like that's that's the task that gets dropped on a lot of us who are trying to make it into that world.
16:13It's not that way now, thankfully, now I have all the space and the you know, that I that I need.
16:19But yeah, yeah, it's it's absolutely like a a world that a lot of us don't even know exist.
16:23I didn't know.
16:25They don't tell you.
16:28You grow up on the south side of San Antonio.
16:33Neither of your parents have graduated high school.
16:37All of your uncles are are in and out of wherever they're in and out of.
16:41You're supposed to like, oh, are you going to, you're coming up at the end of your high school career, are you going to go do landscaping with your one uncle?
16:50Or are you going to go lay tile with your other uncle?
16:53Or are you going to go work at the tire shop with your other uncle?
16:55Pick one of these.
16:56They're not telling you, hey, guess what, you can fucking watch a movie and write about it and we'll pay you some money.
17:04They don't tell you that that's like a thing that you can do.
17:08So, yeah, it's it's it's definitely closed off.
17:10It's like very far away from a lot of our a lot of our lives.
17:18When I came up, I got my start at the alt weekly.
17:22Houston Press was the big one that we had there.
17:25And that was like a place that I went to write.
17:30And again, you know, you weren't getting I wasn't getting paid very much, maybe like $20 a blog post or whatever like that.
17:37But they were allowing me to write and I could take that and like flip it into, oh,
17:41let me take these and now I can pitch Texas Monthly.
17:45Like you're saying.
17:47Or whatever.
17:49Um, but I think, I think listen to that.
17:53I think you have to get even smaller than that, like if you're in in if you're in a position to help,
18:00you you can go, I'm just going to throw some stuff out there.
18:04But you can go like on Twitter and there'll be like a there's like a hub, or like, here's a here's a doc, here's like a Google Doc or a Google spreadsheet of a bunch of writers of color.
18:12Here's here's one for for black writers, here's one for Latino writers, here's one for Asian writers.
18:16And we can go through there and they're all listed out and they've got like samples of their work and now you're going to have to sit there and click on the links and read the articles until you find stuff that you like.
18:24But if you want to help, then help.
18:27You know what I'm saying?
18:30That's part of it, that's part of the that's part of the help.
18:33It'd be me, it'd be me like me saying, hey, Clive, you need help.
18:40Oh, your car's not working.
18:41You want me to help?
18:41And then you're like, yeah.
18:42But I don't want to like drive to your house and get my tools out.
18:47You know what I'm saying?
18:48I'm just going to tell you.
18:51It's tricky, but it can it can happen.
18:55I started this thing a a couple of months ago, two months ago.
19:00It's like a fake publishing company that I was just going to run myself.
19:05And I called it halfway books.
19:08And this is a play on a song by Mob Deep.
19:13Uh, where there's a very famous line in it, the song's called Shook Ones, but in the line, there's ain't no such thing as halfway crooks.
19:22So this is halfway books, it's a play on that.
19:25And what I wanted to do, what I did, is I like put a call out in my little my my circle of writer friends.
19:30And I was like, hey, I'm going to hire five writers to write, each one of y'all are going to write 3,000 words about one rap album that you like.
19:38Just love.
19:40And we're going to place it in a in a in a historical context and we're going to like.
19:45We're going to do some tricks in there to make it like look cool.
19:48And we'll basically be presenting it as a digital version of like one chapter of a book and you can do what you want with it after that.
19:55But I just wanted to do it because I wanted to see what it was like to be an editor.
20:01Or not even an editor, but to be like a the person who makes all the like final decisions.
20:05Be in charge.
20:06Whatever.
20:07But I did that and we set it up.
20:10And I made sure I picked my five writers and all of them, by coincidence, ended up being white.
20:14And so now we're like, all working on our thing together.
20:18And and as I'm working on this, uh, my guy from from 12 books, Sean Desmond,
20:24who's my editor for movies and other things and the upcoming book,
20:29he reached out.
20:30And he was like, hey, I see this thing that you're doing.
20:33We should figure out a way to like tie it in with this.
20:37And I said, yeah, that sounds great.
20:39You know, people say this to me all the time.
20:41And he's like, all right, cool.
20:44Let me make some calls.
20:46And then he hit me back like two weeks later and he had this whole thing set up.
20:51Now we're going to do like an official.
20:54Like an official internship straight from halfway books into Hashat, we're going to take like a group of of.
21:01I live down the street from a college here in San Antonio.
