MARK BOWDEN: Where you from in Chicago?
CHRIS NEUMER: Oak Park.
MARK BOWDEN: I’m from Glen Ellen.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh. Our high school did something with your high school.
MARK BOWDEN: I left before I went to high school. But if I would have stayed, I would have gone to Glenbard West.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, that was in our division. So, you’ve seen the magazine right?
MARK BOWDEN: No, I haven’t.
CHRIS NEUMER: Ah. Okay. This is what it’s here for. It’s a film thing. And I realize you’re on sort of the periphery of that, but it allows me all sorts of interesting questions that we can get into. It’s something that I started awhile ago as well as something that I write for.
MARK BOWDEN: Really? Good for you. Great.
CHRIS NEUMER: So, you’ll see my smiling face on page four. Talking about Nick Nolte stories in this one I believe.
MARK BOWDEN: Page four.
CHRIS NEUMER: Might be the next page
MARK BOWDEN: Ah, there you are.
CHRIS NEUMER: There I am.
MARK BOWDEN: I’m impressed. This is a very ambitious thing to do. I’m surprised you’re doing it on paper.
CHRIS NEUMER: You know, it’s amazing how much paper, and the actual physical having of a magazine works with people. If it was just online I don’t think doors would open. But for some reason people still put a premium on the paper and I think a large part of the success is due to the fact that it is on paper, which sounds strange now, but…
MARK BOWDEN: Believe me I don’t understand how the industry works. I just have my own little niche and pretty much stay in it.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah. It’s funny. People will say, “Oh you’re going to D.C. Why the hell are you going to D.C. to write about film?” And I say, “Well, I’ve got a few things I’m talking about here and there, interviewing some people in the House for another story that actually relates to another story I’m doing about Hollywood. And this morning I actually got to talk to Brent Bozell from the Parent’s Television Council. He’s the guy that got really mad about Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl and started the supremely massive letter-writing campaign to get the FCC fines and all that. So, he was interesting.
MARK BOWDEN: Why Stumped?
CHRIS NEUMER: It used to be this really small newsletter called Stumped at the Video Store for people who were stumped at the video store. So, we kept looking for a better name that didn’t have the word film in it, because there’s so many film magazines with the word film.
MARK BOWDEN: Right.
CHRIS NEUMER: And so we ended up sticking with this. Always looking for something better and never finding it. And this way, we get to make amputee porn jokes about it. It works out well.
MARK BOWDEN: Well, it’s a memorable name, so…
CHRIS NEUMER: That too. And besides Okay, I think we’re one of the few that has a punctuation mark in the title. Whatever makes you stand out I guess. I was attempting to describe to people who I was interviewing in you. And I said, “He wrote the book Black Hawk Down and he did Killing Pablo, and I was going through some of the other stuff that you’ve done, and they’d be like, “Oh, he wrote the movie Black Hawk Down!” “No. No. He wrote the source material.” And it was this very confusing thing. To make things easier, I just started describing you as the closest thing we have to Indiana Jones today.
MARK BOWDEN: (laughs) That’s sort of a wild exaggeration.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, you only see Indiana Jones when he’s out doing his thing. You don’t see him in front of the typewriter, so to speak.
MARK BOWDEN: There’s always the mandatory shot of him in a classroom.
CHRIS NEUMER: At the very end of class yelling at the kids to study hard or whatever…. And so I thought about this with you. There was this guy a couple years back, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, Joe Kane? He wrote the book Savages.
MARK BOWDEN: The book Savages.
CHRIS NEUMER: And I had mentioned to him, because he was wearing a fedora and a leather coat, I asked him where the bullwhip was, and he was like, “ehhhh.” And I was like, “Come on. You’re running around in the Amazon. You’re writing books about. You’re finding lost tribes… digging through these elements of worldly uniquities, to create a new word. You doing very similar things, in principle.
MARK BOWDEN: Well, I’m just a journalist and I’m lucky enough to be able to work on the stories that I want to work on and I can go anywhere in the world to work on them. And often you start with a story with no particular goal of going someplace exotic or dangerous but you go where the story takes you. And as long as it’s something that I can do and I think do safely, then I’m willing to go do it for the story’s sake.
CHRIS NEUMER: By the way, is this actually your office, or is this just an empty place where you’re sitting?
MARK BOWDEN: This is just an empty place where I’m sitting. I work at home. I’m very rarely in Washington. I come back to Washington maybe once a month or something. I never work here. I just happened to have an interview myself interviewing somebody at lunch today. And Terrence, my researcher works here all the time, but this is where I come when I come to Washington…
CHRIS NEUMER: Guess that’s the red carpet.
MARK BOWDEN: I just got for whatever empty office happens to be available, I’m in here and I’ve got the internet and one computer. But this is just a convenient place for talking to you.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, I’m glad that we could connect. One of the beauties of publishing a magazine is that the stories that we do are things that can be of interest to me as opposed to getting assigned, “You have to talk to the director of Scooby Doo.”
MARK BOWDEN: Right
CHRIS NEUMER: I can pick actors I like and I can pick topics that I like. And I was curious for you as someone who delves into things and with the copious amounts of research and interviews that you do, are there any red flags about particular stories and things that you steer away from?
MARK BOWDEN: Well, I pretty much go on the basis of my own curiosity. That’s the prime motivator. I try to avoid doing the same thing over and over again. There’s some things I just have no interest in at all.
CHRIS NEUMER: For example.
MARK BOWDEN: Well, for instance, I just talked to Graydon Carter, who’s the editor of Vanity Fair. I told him “I just don’t have any interest in talking to movie stars.” And he got kind of bent out of shape. And they do do other things at Vanity Fair, but that is what they put out in the front and what they sell. I think that I’m 55 years old and I’ve been working as a journalist for almost 30 years and for me to work on something, I have to feel like either I’m going to have a lot of fun doing it or that it is really interesting to me. And by that I mean, this is something that helps to explain the world, in some way to me. I’ve been very interested in recent years in how the United States interacts with the rest of the world. Particularly with the military and foreign policy. To me, I think that’s one of the most interesting things going on in the world today and certainly one of the most challenging aspects of being an American citizen. I’m always interested in finding out how things really work and why certain things happened the way they did.
CHRIS NEUMER: Do you know of director Steve James, the documentarian? He’s from Oak Park as well. And I spoke to him on a number of occasions and he always pointed out that when he would get involved in a topic that it was a process of self discovery for him and it wasn’t just to tell a story. He said, “A lot of the time, for me, it’s something that I want to figure out myself…”
MARK BOWDEN: Everything that happens in your life shapes who you are and what you’re interested in. I was a suburban kid. I was raised in Glen Ellyn and Port Washington, Long Island. And it didn’t really make much difference, because everywhere I moved was pretty much the same place. The suburbs are the suburbs. Everything really interesting and everything really important happened somewhere else. And so I think that’s an underlying motivation in putting yourself out there. For me initially, it was just moving to the city and living in the city and working for a newspaper and feeling like, “Okay, now I’m finally engaged in real life.” Of course, real life is also happening in the suburbs too, but you don’t realize that when you’re a kid…
CHRIS NEUMER: Is it really? Okay, I’ll concede the point because it does make sense.
MARK BOWDEN: (laughs) No, that’s a big piece of it. One of the main things that really typifies the Midwestern mindset, to an extent, is the idea that they live in a really safe place. All the really dangerous stuff in our culture, and now with threats of terrorism, but even such things as hurricanes but the Midwest feels like a really safe place and things are really normal there. And the real weirdos are out in New York or LA and places like that. And I do feel that writers generally are engaged in trying to create a narrative out of their own experience, whether they’re writing about themselves or not. What are the distinguishing features of our time? I think one of the things that makes our experiences as human beings radically different than any people that ever lived before our present time is that we are all awash in information. I don’t think that was the case 50 years ago or even 30 years ago. I think that’s unique to this period in time. And one of the consequences of that is that we all know a little bit about a lot of things. I think it’s very natural when knowing a little bit about something to want to know more. I think that ends up throwing me, in some cases, into very distant places and exotic situations. It’s all in an effort to try to understand the way things really happened as opposed to the way they’re explained to me through the various mediums… whether it’s a political medium, or a journalistic medium, or a film medium. This way I can find out for myself.
CHRIS NEUMER: I find it interesting how you deem that “normal”. I was taken back to a situation where a friend’s girlfriend was trying to figure out where in the continental United States the state of Nebraska was. She first guessed it was north of Idaho. Then she guessed it was between Minnesota and Iowa. Then I think she asked if it was touching Mexico. Her final thought on the matter was, “Well, I’m never going there, so why do I need to know it anyway?” And I thought, “There’s that apathy.” And you might not encounter it, I don’t really encounter it. But I think that’s also a product of the sort of people we hang around with as opposed to them. It’s interesting how the absence of information is sort of what gets people out of the suburbs; they are not content to live that life.
MARK BOWDEN: It could be. Some people do find it very comfortable. I have seven brothers and sisters and I think some of them have taken that approach to life; stay where things are comfortable. Stay where things are familiar and predictable and not take too many chances. I remember my younger sister saying, “Why would anyone read a newspaper?” So... But I’m not that way and I think most people are not.
CHRIS NEUMER: Let me ask you this: every once in a while I hear some song on the radio. Like something by some new metal-rap fusion band and I think, “God, that’s awful.” And then I think how great it would be if I could actually enjoy things that were bad and how much better my life would be and then I wonder about my friend’s girlfriend who didn’t know where Nebraska was and I just wonder if life… if ignorance is truly bliss in that respect.
MARK BOWDEN: Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yes. Exactly. Are there times where you’ll call someone up. Maybe you’ll be down in Peru or something like that and you’ll be back in the jungles and the rebel forces will have to lead you to different places and you’ll go, “Man. I should have stayed in Philadelphia. I should have been reading the comics today. Right now. As opposed to out here.”
MARK BOWDEN: Yeah, that happens. And you generally try to limit those moments. Most of the time when I’m travelling and reporting I’m not in a difficult situation. I’m having fun and I’m eating foods that I’ve never eaten before and seeing sights that I’ve never seen before. I’m a terrible tourist. I have no interest in travelling for its own sake. But if I’m going to Russia because I have a story to do, I’m looking forward to the trip. I arrive with a full agenda of things to do and I enjoy being in a different place. It’s just like you’re more alive almost. Everything is so stimulating and interesting.
CHRIS NEUMER: And there’s a reason.
MARK BOWDEN: And there’s a purpose for it. But in and of itself, I don’t have any desire to do it. So, yeah, I have experienced times when I’ve thought, “Gee, why am I doing this?” I’ve got kids, I’ve got a lovely home. I make a good living. I live in a safe, beautiful country. And I should probably just stay there. (laughs) But I do feel a call to try to understand these things that I write. I don’t feel that it’s worth my time to write something unless I bring something new and original to the table and to do that you have to put yourself out to find out things for yourself. Very few people are doing it.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hence the reason I was questioning you about the “normal” designation of the suburbs.
MARK BOWDEN: Well “normal”… Growing up in the suburbs, I did have the sense that the real world was somewhere else. And I now feel that less so, but I did a lot when I was younger. I was just driven to escape that predictable, safe, suburban life and really put myself out there where things were real and things were really happening. I needed to try to understand things for myself. That led to this career. So, maybe that makes me abnormal, but…
CHRIS NEUMER: In a good way.
MARK BOWDEN: It’s the truth about me. And maybe because I’m a journalist and I’ve been surrounded by journalists for most of my adult life, it’s normal in my circle to be that way.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hmm. I find the designation of journalist interesting. Because obviously there are different types. I mean, there are different types of baseball players. They all get paid differently. And they’re all different types. I know some people who work for the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune; you are in a different class of journalism. It’s not just in the scope of your material, even just the hundreds of interviews that you’re conducting; you’re sort of a macrojournalist.
MARK BOWDEN: Well, it’s just the direction I’ve gone. I think I’ve always been motivated to write narratives and narratives require a tremendous amount of reporting. And I’ve always been driven to do more and more ambitious things and I don’t think that’s always the case, so both my ambitions and my interests and, thankfully, opportunities have given me the opportunity to eventually evolve into someone who does work at a rarefied level. And I recognize that I have one of the better jobs in journalist. To be oriented the way I am. I would love to have had this job when I was in my 20s. Writing books, and working on films and writing for the magazine.
CHRIS NEUMER: I wonder if it would be a different experience then. I mean obviously everything would be different. I’m only 30 myself, so I can’t talk about The Young Turks. But I wonder if the experiences that you’ve had have brought you to where you are and allowed you to do it. I wonder if you… do you think you’d still be able to do the same high level of work with the same kind of perspective if you were doing this when you were 25.
MARK BOWDEN: No. When I was in my 20s I was doing the best work I could do in my 20s. I’ve been very fortunate in my career that I’ve never felt that any editor or any organization was holding me back. I was always doing the best work I could do. And what that meant for me was evolving into being a better writer, being a more ambitious reporter. Going further into a field than most reporters are willing to go. I’m not someone who woke up at age 16 with the gift of writing books and everything else. It’s been an evolutionary process. I’m proud of the work I did in my 20s. I’m glad it’s led me to the kind of work I do today. And it’s a lot more ambitious—well, it’s not more ambitious. I got to the point where they were just happy to have me around and now I get along great with editors.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s the full quote right there.
MARK BOWDEN: (laughs)
