It was the context of when your, you learned that your father died.

Well, this is why I like doing interviews, [laughs] 'cause you learn about yourself in a way that it's out of your control to a certain degree, and it can be really rewarding on that level.

Like, I've never put together Noah and Micah's talk with me about my life and about my dad with me writing the book, and I definitely, definitely have never put two and two together with what you were just talking about with that moment when my brother Michael calls me to tell me that my dad has died, finds a kind of a resonance in the movie in that scene where, where Matthew Rhys, you know, you know, passes out.

But I, I guess that's why I reacted to the movie as I did.

I went and saw that movie in the Sony building in the, like, 26th floor private screening room that they have in that building in New York City.

Other than the, than the guy who was running the projector, I was the only person in that room, and I sat there just thinking, "Okay, I'm watching this movie.

I like Micah, I like Noah, but it's really not about me.

As you go out on promotional tours, as you do interviews on podcasts or television shows, what's it been like sharing, and does it change what's still inside of you about your dad?

Mm-hmm

...

in, in the years where Christianity is being developed, and coming up with a very, very different answer.

So Aurelius is basically saying, "Okay, so, so death is simply a fact of life, and, and to accept that changes, changes everything.

It's natural."

Yeah.

And a, you know, you, you feel that a lot of times when you read the ancients, like, they are, they are on a stage.

And, um, the fact that he's sitting either in his bedroom or in a camp tent or whatever doing this is, I think, what lends it its immediacy.

The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Yeah.

L- exactly.

How did you know? [laughs] Um, yeah.

But yeah, exactly.

And, um, and the, the cool, the really interesting thing about doing that is that the organization of those books tells its own story, and the story is of, is of humanity.

Like, everything it does is wrong, essentially.

Yeah.

I believe it's on page four.

Yeah.

So the, uh, the eulogy had a title, "If You're Gonna Be a Bear, Be a Grizzly," and that was one of my dad's sayings.

"My father, Dad, Pop-Pop, was not like other fathers.

He was not like other people, period.

A lot of people have told me that he's with Jesus now.

Well, with all due respect, I have my doubts, unless, of course, Jesus has shaved his beard, ditched the sandals, and is drinking a martini at the El Morocco circa 1955 with Frank and Ava.

Mm-hmm

As your father gets older, what's your relationship to him and these secrets that he may or may not understand you possess that are bringing you closer to him, but also clearly have left you wary of him?

You know, I became, in some ways, his protector.

He did not age well, and he went from being a guy who made $250,000 a year to a guy who had lost everything.

How did he lose everything? He was a terrible gambler and he was even worse, he was even a worse investor in the stock market.

I mean, he was the most confident man I had ever, you know, come across and that itself was like seductive and powerful.

And then he became a guy whose pockets were lined with regrets.

I mean, he was one of these guys, that's all he did was talk about, you know, woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Why?

Yeah.

Did his actions basically prove that the words were, were empty? Or how I, I look at it is like the words were good it- if only his actions had been better.

So my book begins with the sentence, "Everybody knew," and I think that what you're talking about right now, that there was an entire society set up to basically allow the Founding Fathers to do whatever they really felt like doing-

... spit out of the system

... there's that, there's that moment in the book where, I mean, I am just about to turn 50.

It's the day before I turn 50, and I go to see Frankie Klein, who was my father's wing man in Florida, and he... and I bring him...

He loved my father so much that I'm bringing him some of my father's ashes in a shot glass so that he can spread them in the lake behind his house.

There's a transaction that's going on.

[laughs]

And, you know, he was 77 years old.

You know, I had heard that story.

I had heard...

Growing up, that's, like, all you heard about at the dinner table, is he had gone to El Morocco, and Liz Taylor was there and couldn't keep her eyes off your father.

And so I really felt like I was sort of giving him this gift when I was doing this story and also giving myself the gift of having his secrets revealed.

So it was sort of a deal.

Patiently, forensically, he follows a trail of faint footprints in an attempt to know more.

And now that his mother and father were gone, there was only one person to ask.

So Valerie was like the white whale for me.

And I went to see her out in the California desert in 2017.

She was old.

She was not particularly healthy.

And I knew that if I walked away from that without her doing the interview and talking to me about where I wanted to go, I knew I'd never get it.

You know, I just did not take, I refused to take a backward step.

Do you give any thought to what your dad would think of this book?

[laughs]

But he was also gleaming.

[laughs] He was, he was a well-lubricated man in addition to a, a dark tan one.

And he had, um, eyes that were the, the greenest eyes I've ever seen in a human being.

So they were, they were set back against this backdrop of, of this dark tan.

He was, he was bejeweled with his, with his pinky ring and his gold-plated World War II dog tag.

And it really depends on, on how you saw him.

Okay.

[laughs]

So, so you, you can only imagine the eye rolls that followed that.

But I mean, my mom, you know, taught me how to read poetry.

Um, I don't know if I'd be a writer with- without my dad and his use of language and, and, and, and the secrets that he kept, but I wouldn't be a writer either if it wasn't for my mom and the support she gave me.

So that's, that's a...

It's a really important part of the book for me is that my mom, what my mom represented and what she still represents to me.

Um, there's a, um, a point where I write a story about my dad for GQ in 1996, and it's...

I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father." That's a very important part of this book, and I don't think I fully understand what you're saying.