The Art of Manliness - #110： Hardboiled Detectives, Boxing, and Creativity With David Levien

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.820 So a few months ago, we had screenwriter and Renaissance man Brian Koppelman on the show

00:00:22.980 to discuss creativity, working routines, facing rejection, and what Brian had to say resonated

00:00:28.700 with a lot of you and a lot of you. We got rave reviews about that podcast. Anyways, Brian

00:00:32.880 mentioned he has a writing partner that he's worked with for pretty much his entire career

00:00:37.560 that they've worked together on. Rounders, The Illusionist, Ocean's 13, and that writing

00:00:42.480 partner is named David Levine. And Brian made the introduction and I had to get David on

00:00:46.140 the show because besides being a screenplay writer, besides being a movie producer and

00:00:51.040 director, David is also a published novelist and he's focused a lot of his work on the

00:00:55.380 detective genre, which I'm a big fan of, Raymond Chandler and all those classic hard-boiled

00:01:00.740 detective novels. Anyways, David and I discussed creativity, his working routine, how you establish

00:01:07.200 a working relationship with a writing partner or a business partner of any type. We also

00:01:11.880 discussed detective novels and what men can learn from detectives in the detective novel

00:01:17.880 genre and why the detective has become such an archetype of American masculinity. Besides

00:01:25.340 that, we talked about boxing and MMA. David is a boxer. He's dabbled in mixed martial arts

00:01:30.540 as well for most of his life. And in fact, his grandfather was a professional boxer who

00:01:35.340 fought Joe Lewis for the world championship. We discussed what lessons David has learned

00:01:40.600 from boxing and also from his grandfather's experience as a professional boxer in boxing,

00:01:45.160 Joe Lewis. Anyway, fascinating podcast with lots of great insights and things you can do

00:01:49.980 to start applying in your life today to improve yourself. I think you're really gonna like

00:01:53.200 this, so let's do this.

00:01:58.220 David Levine, welcome to the show.

00:02:00.800 Thanks, Brett. Happy to be on.

00:02:02.740 All right, so you are a writer, not only of fiction, but also of screenplays. And you're

00:02:08.700 actually the writing partner of Brian Koppelman, who we've had on the podcast before. And you

00:02:13.740 guys worked on, what is it, Rounders and Ocean's 13 and Walking Tall or some of those?

00:02:18.260 Yeah. Brian and I have been best friends since we were kids, actually. We met when I was 14. He

00:02:26.920 was 15 or 16 on this summer trip. And we lived near each other in New York growing up. Never

00:02:32.360 went to the same school, but, you know, lived near each other and had been best buddies since

00:02:37.900 then, you know. And a while back, like about 17, 18 years back, we'd each taken these circuitous

00:02:47.800 routes through our careers. And we ended up at this place where we both wanted to write screenplays

00:02:53.560 and make movies. And I had had a lot of experience in the business because after college, I moved out

00:03:01.080 to L.A. and started working in the movie business in low-level assistant type of jobs as a reader

00:03:08.460 mainly of screenplays and then a story editor. So I read thousands of screenplays. And, you

00:03:15.560 know, out of the thousands, there were probably a dozen good ones. But I felt like I was able to

00:03:21.100 identify them and understand the form through osmosis by just being there and reading so many

00:03:27.680 of them. And I ended up back in New York and I was bartending. He was working as a record

00:03:34.300 exec. And we decided we wanted to sort of join forces and do a script together. And we started

00:03:45.080 meeting like in the mornings before he went to his job and after I get back from, you know,

00:03:50.020 I wake up early after bartending. And we knew we wanted to tell a story about friendship.

00:03:57.240 And about trying to find your destiny and all that sort of stuff. And we couldn't exactly

00:04:01.860 figure out what world to set it in. We knew that one of the characters would probably be

00:04:07.320 a law school student, though that wasn't the path he wanted to take. And then one night,

00:04:14.260 like three in the morning, I got a call and it was Brian. And he'd stumbled into one of these

00:04:18.280 underground poker clubs in New York City and gotten cleaned out, lost every dime he had.

00:04:23.140 But he loved it. He thought it was so colorful and amazing. And the next night we went back and

00:04:28.720 we started going basically every night playing slash researching. And we did that for about a

00:04:34.680 year and met all the characters on the scene. And that's when we knew that we'd do this poker

00:04:40.960 movie. And that's what turned into Rounders.

00:04:42.960 Turned into Rounders. 1.00

00:04:43.600 Yeah. And we've been working together ever since. We've been writing partners in the movie world.

00:04:50.920 We've produced a lot of stuff together and we've directed together as well.

00:04:54.540 So here's a question I have. You guys are best friends since you guys were kids. How do you

00:05:00.740 collaborate on creative work? Because for a lot of people, I think they think something like a

00:05:05.880 screenplay or a movie, you know, directing. It's sort of like it's the lone artist, the lone genius

00:05:12.260 working by himself. How do you fuse two minds into this, to a story, right? With the screenplay?

00:05:20.400 What's your collaboration process like?

00:05:24.720 Well, you know, you hear about these writing teams and even like three person and sometimes

00:05:31.380 even more people on a team. And it is kind of hard to understand how all that can coalesce and

00:05:38.720 turn into like a single vision. But for us, you know, if people would think about the Hughes

00:05:44.720 brothers or the Cone brothers, it would make more sense in a way as if like, because people are

00:05:49.360 brothers, they have a mind meld going. So we sort of say that we're like brothers, but we don't have

00:05:56.620 all the baggage of having grown up in the same house in a way. We, you know, growing up since

00:06:01.800 we've known each other since we were kids, we've read a bunch of the same books, always we're going

00:06:07.480 to the movies together. So, you know, our favorite movies are pretty similar. I'm listening to the same

00:06:12.600 music. We have like a shared language in a way. And there just seemed to be something like when

00:06:19.040 we started writing, writing scripts, there's, it's a collaborative medium, you know, often it

00:06:25.220 starts with one person alone, right in this story. And then other people get involved and, you know,

00:06:29.640 it starts to become all these, you know, a director, camera people, all these crew members and producers

00:06:36.260 and money people and stuff like that. So our thing just starts being collaborative right from the

00:06:40.240 beginning. And, you know, we would be saying the dialogue to each other. So it wouldn't be like

00:06:45.600 the solitary thing where you would picture like an author just in a room alone, grinding out this

00:06:50.760 prose. We're writing these scenes that are basically, you know, these, a lot of these scenes

00:06:55.360 are, are people talking to each other. So there we are doing it before it's barely written.

00:07:00.520 That's cool. Well, um, besides your, um, the screenplay work, you also write fiction, write

00:07:07.780 novels, uh, and detective fiction in particular, you have the, uh, the Frank Bear series. And I'm

00:07:14.880 curious, I'm a big fan of like the, the hard boiled detective novelists from years gone by,

00:07:20.080 like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Um, have those guys had an influence on your work?

00:07:25.680 Definitely, you know, growing up, I, I would read those books. Um, I love Hammett. I love Chandler.

00:07:34.680 Jim Thompson was a guy who, you know, I read everything he wrote. Lawrence Block, and I've

00:07:41.200 been lucky enough to get to know Lawrence Block over the last little while, which is amazing.

00:07:45.980 Elmore Leonard, I'm a huge fan of, but then other writers too, you know, um, I was a big Hemingway

00:07:53.220 reader growing up. And I think I read his sort of, uh, fancier novels, but when I became an adult,

00:08:00.240 I went back and started reading those short stories. And a lot of them are kind of hard

00:08:03.440 boiled crime, short stories. And his writing style is, you know, really lends itself to that.

00:08:09.980 It's so terse and economical and, you know, uh, guys like Ken Nunn. So I've been a huge fan of,

00:08:18.780 of that genre. And I wrote a couple of books sort of at the beginning of my screenwriting career.

00:08:25.000 I published two. They were more, what would be considered literary novels, um, less genre,

00:08:30.860 but I had this idea for the first one of these Frank Bear books in, in the series, you know,

00:08:37.000 what turned out to be a series at the time. It was just this one story I really wanted to tell

00:08:41.020 about, um, about a kid who, who goes missing from sort of a place where it's not expected. He's,

00:08:50.240 he's in Indianapolis and the Midwest kind of bucolic setting where people aren't really ready for that

00:08:56.420 kind of thing. And his father sort of can't, can't let the thing go and accept it and tries

00:09:03.240 a few times futilely to get private investigators involved, but they don't do any good. And then

00:09:09.760 he happens onto this guy, Frank Bear, who's my character and Bear takes on this case and he's

00:09:16.540 got a, he's got a dark sort of tragic episode in his past that in a way dovetails with the missing

00:09:23.400 kid. And it's sort of haunting to him, but he decides he's going to do it. And he starts getting

00:09:28.660 involved and he starts finding what he thinks are results. And before long, the father can't sit

00:09:35.100 idly by and sort of forces his way in to, to work with bear. And it's sort of a buddy, a buddy book in

00:09:44.800 the hard boiled genre where these guys build a relationship as they go to try to find out what

00:09:48.940 happened to this kid. And at the time I was working in the movie business and I didn't have a lot of

00:09:56.680 free time, but I had this burning desire to, to be a novelist and publish books. And I decided that I

00:10:05.400 was going to start waking up super early before I went to work. And I had moved out to, uh, out of

00:10:13.160 New York to the suburbs by then. So I started taking the train to Manhattan and I stopped driving because

00:10:19.360 that was wasted time where the most I could do is, was listen to something like listen to a book on tape

00:10:24.440 or something like that. And I started taking the train and trying to grab that 40 minute block of

00:10:30.220 time in my life. And little by little, just write one scene a day or, you know, a few paragraphs,

00:10:38.220 whatever I could. And this, this story came to life and it turned out well. And I was able to

00:10:45.600 set the book up at a great publishing company, Doubleday. And they made a two book deal with me and,

00:10:52.260 and the series would launch from there. Fantastic. And you have another one coming out,

00:10:56.660 right? I do. I have the fourth one in the series coming out. It's called Signature Kill.

00:11:01.720 And, uh, that's coming out on the 24th. I'm excited about it and working on it for a long time.

00:11:08.420 And it is a, uh, a journey into some, some dark stuff. Frank there, my guy, who's this big brooding

00:11:17.040 guy who works on his own, sometimes a little self-destructive, doesn't build a great career

00:11:22.560 for himself. Uh, sometimes he, he spikes into a good situation where he can make some money and

00:11:28.680 be on the right track, but he's got a couple of self-limiting or antisocial tendencies that,

00:11:35.940 that rear up. And he's basically on his own. He's got some financial pressure.

00:11:40.980 He can't figure out exactly how he's going to find cases. And he sees a billboard with a missing

00:11:47.980 young woman on it with a big reward attached. And he knows it's sort of a hopeless case,

00:11:52.400 but he decides to sign onto it. And as he starts working that case of what happened to this girl,

00:12:02.320 he realizes that he's in the middle of a, a bigger case overall, where lots of people,

00:12:08.800 young women especially have started to disappear in, in the city of Indianapolis over the last 0.98

00:12:17.240 many, many years, but in a way that it's not clear that it's a serial killer, uh, to people

00:12:24.720 who wouldn't be looking or who wouldn't want it to be broadcast. The police sort of don't want it to

00:12:30.580 be known as that because they don't want to create a panic, but he starts to figure out that there might

00:12:35.880 be linkage between what he's working on in this bigger case. And he goes from there.

00:12:41.660 That sounds like some Dashiell Hammett. There's a, one of the novels was like that, where

00:12:45.480 the detective will get on a case and he finds out it's actually something bigger.

00:12:50.220 The detective, right? The private eye is sort of this, has become this archetype of American

00:12:55.120 manliness, right? Because people think of Humphrey Bogart in the trench coat, the hat,

00:12:59.620 the cigarette in the mouth, stoic. Uh, I mean, do you consciously think about like masculinity

00:13:05.860 or manliness when you're developing your characters or how they'll respond to a situation?

00:13:11.220 Well, it's definitely a manly area, right? I, I, my, my thing is set in contemporary times,

00:13:18.660 so nobody's walking around in trench coats and hats, but there's this incredible, there's this

00:13:25.680 incredible legacy. You know, there's something so great about the detective and especially a detective

00:13:32.400 in America, because if you really extrapolate it, then you're talking about somebody who's searching

00:13:40.060 existentially and they're looking for answers to incredibly complex questions at the heart of these

00:13:48.060 cases, things that get to the heart of our existence that can't really be found out.

00:13:53.660 They can find out facts and they can put together the way things happened. And that's sort of just a nod at

00:14:01.520 what they're really looking for, which is usually, um, some better description of, of their identity.

00:14:11.520 There's in the good ones of these stories, the cases that they're on have a reflection to what, what the,

00:14:19.100 the detective doesn't understand about himself. And there's a parallel, a little bit of a parallel

00:14:27.960 journey going on. If the guy figures out what's going on on the outside, he's, he's also discovering

00:14:33.600 something internal about himself. You have these guys in a violent setting and there's either gunplay

00:14:41.380 or fist play. And there's a lot of, you know, there's, there's criminals who are trying to

00:14:50.240 inflict their will and take what they want in these situations. And these guys don't want it to

00:14:54.960 happen. So it does get very mano a mano. Yeah. I think what's interesting too, is that the detective

00:15:00.140 is like, he works outside the authority, right? Like he's usually not a police officer. He works on his

00:15:06.760 own. Uh, maybe there's some kind of rugged individualist thing going on there. There is, um,

00:15:14.140 my, my character was a cop and that went badly after a certain point due to certain things that

00:15:22.500 happened in his private life. So there are times in my story, the conflict is always fun and drama. So

00:15:31.360 the cops bitching at the private eye, you know, it just makes for fun scenes. I, I try to texture 0.85

00:15:40.480 it a little because there are times when my guy can turn to the police and certain friends that he,

00:15:47.720 he managed to maintain on the force and they'll help him a little. There's other times when they'll

00:15:51.640 try to use him and manipulate him in ways that he doesn't know in order to pursue their agenda

00:15:56.420 through an outside person. And there's times when they're both working for the same ends,

00:16:03.460 but that diverges most of the time. And it becomes a problem because the cops want,

00:16:09.400 they want to be the authority in this area and certain private investigators, hardheaded ones

00:16:14.820 don't want to listen. And I mean, real life, you've got guys who really work out of outside of the

00:16:20.300 system. If you think of, uh, Pelicano, who's been in jail for a while, you know, he's a classic

00:16:27.100 example of that. He was a totally famous figure in Los Angeles, but he was operating a way that was

00:16:35.880 more criminal than almost anybody he was investigating. Interesting. Um, I'm curious about

00:16:42.620 this. Why there's, there's a lot of talk about how, um, men don't really read fiction, right? Like

00:16:49.060 fiction sort of like for ladies, guys like to read biographies and success books or business books,

00:16:55.380 but what benefit do you think men can get from reading fiction or why do you think they should

00:17:01.500 make that part of their literary diet? That's a great question. You know, and I do think that

00:17:06.860 the publishing industry and the book companies buy into that to a certain degree, you know, the book

00:17:12.040 companies have just had much bigger success by placing these female themed novels in these book 0.97

00:17:20.800 clubs, which are somehow, um, largely female. And, you know, the Oprah book club was a huge driver

00:17:28.220 of, of sales for books. And, and I understand what it's like, you know, guys have a lot of

00:17:38.420 responsibility. They have jobs, they have families to raise, they have a lot of stuff to do. And I,

00:17:43.120 I suppose that the wrong kind of fiction can seem trifling or a waste of time to them.

00:17:47.960 And they could read a book like on, on, uh, unbreakable or unbroken, the Zamperini.

00:17:54.500 Oh yeah. Unbroken. Yeah. Unbroken or, or lone survivor. And they get all of the charge of fiction

00:18:03.720 out of that, but it's a true story. And in a way it's inspiring because there's this great courage,

00:18:09.940 bravery going on. And in a way you can graph that into your own daily thing. So I understand it,

00:18:16.220 but I think that, I think that there's the right kind of stuff for guys to read that they'll get a

00:18:22.040 ton out of depending what their interests are. I mean, there's a lot of great writers working these

00:18:26.180 days. Yeah. I mean, I love some of my favorite fiction, male fiction writer guys. I mean,

00:18:31.240 cause I'm not specifically male fiction writers, but the guys, the authors who a lot of men gravitate

00:18:36.280 to, um, I love like, they're often very ambiguous, right? Like you don't know, it never, it never ends

00:18:42.120 with like a good ending. Right. But it leaves you thinking and pondering, like, what would I do in

00:18:48.600 that situation? You know, like Cormac McCarthy. I mean, I read, I've read almost all of his books and

00:18:54.540 like, they're all like really violent and they're all sort of like, you're, there's not really not a

00:18:59.160 really great resolution at the end, but it leaves you thinking the same with like the detective

00:19:03.640 novels. Uh, you know, so there's usually, there's a resolution, of course, they solve the crime,

00:19:07.300 but you never, it's sometimes it's not a happy ending. And for some, I like that for some reason.

00:19:13.720 Yeah. I mean, the thing Cormac McCarthy is something you think about any guy who would read

00:19:19.160 nonfiction would love to read those, those books, but you're right. You know, sometimes things are

00:19:24.860 ambiguous or sometimes because of the writing style, which in his case is very elevated and also

00:19:31.440 very iconoclastic. It's, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to parse sometimes, you know, these passages

00:19:38.460 in Spanish in some of his books, there's no punctuation, there's no quotation marks. And, you

00:19:43.520 know, if somebody's on their way to work or something or has a half an hour to read, that can just be a bit

00:19:49.020 of a pain. Um, I, for me, it's worth it. This is, this is the, uh, area that I live in and toil in.

00:19:58.100 So, so I, it's sort of natural to me. I know tons of guys went and saw, um, no country for old men 1.00

00:20:04.760 when it came out. And I, I bet you tons of people love that movie and probably not that many of them

00:20:10.500 read the book, but it's an incredible read. Yeah. And I think, you know, weirdly, um, premium cable,

00:20:16.800 like the AMC really great shows on right now that have sort of, um, a novelistic style to them.

00:20:26.480 You know, they've 10 or 12 episodes that are sort of chapters and it's not cheesy. Like some broadcast

00:20:32.820 TV, there's no commercials. You can, you can download it on iTunes and take it in a binge or

00:20:39.960 something like that. And in a way that supplanted what the detective novels and the noirs used to be

00:20:47.340 for, for guys in the fifties. Yeah. Justified, I guess, is a good example of that or true detective

00:20:53.040 on HBO. Yeah. Great example. You know, love both of those shows and you watch those and you're getting

00:20:58.720 everything that, um, that a really good Elmore Leonard or Mickey Spillane in the old days or

00:21:04.760 whatever one of those books would, you know, what you'd be going for. Yeah. I think I've,

00:21:10.900 I've read studies too about fiction, um, helps you become more empathetic or like builds like theory

00:21:17.380 of mind. Cause like you're, you, by reading fiction, you get into the minds of other characters,

00:21:22.060 even though they're fictional or other people. And it allows you, it sort of builds up like social

00:21:27.580 repertoire in you by reading fiction. I've read somewhere about that. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah.

00:21:33.940 Yeah. That's certainly why I would do it because it puts you in a world and it puts you in the head

00:21:38.780 or voice of, of a person that you would never encounter. You know, really in a way it's putting

00:21:44.040 you in, in the head of an author who some of these guys have been great thinkers or had brilliant ideas

00:21:51.800 or great way to express themselves. So you kind of refer to this, um, earlier when you talked about

00:21:57.820 how you started writing on the train. Um, I mean, I'm curious, like, do you have a ritual to get you

00:22:03.400 ready for work or, but are you one of those guys like, you know, Stephen King, where it's just like,

00:22:06.980 it doesn't matter what I'm doing. If it's on the back of a napkin, if I'm going to create something,

00:22:11.100 I'm going to create something. Things don't have to be perfect.

00:22:15.880 Well, I certainly wouldn't compare my output to Stephen King's. Um, you know, that guy is just a

00:22:22.520 phenom, how he does it. I, I've read some of his books on writing and I actually can't remember his

00:22:28.280 exact way that he goes about it, but clearly the guy is just a natural. For me, I try to,

00:22:34.380 I try to make it less about a ritual because if you build a ritual, it can be a great way to

00:22:40.020 insulate yourself from actually doing it. You can start to get elaborate with that stuff.

00:22:45.860 You know, you need your room set up in a special way. Nobody can be around. It has to be the right

00:22:50.800 time of day. You have to have the right materials. You have to be in the right mood. You can just

00:22:54.840 basically, if then any part of that isn't right, you're starting to make an exit for yourself from

00:23:01.200 doing the task at hand. And you can tell yourself that the rich, you know, the ritual wasn't lived

00:23:06.360 up to. So how could you be expected to do your work or do your best work? I try to not be too

00:23:12.520 precious about that stuff. And I get up, I take and read the paper for a little while, get ready for

00:23:18.940 the day, take my kids to school, which is a good time. I drop them off and then, um, head for the

00:23:24.760 train. And it's like a 42 minute ride. And I just, there's something about the fact that it's

00:23:32.120 short. That's very freeing because it doesn't seem too punishing. It's just like, okay, just do

00:23:37.680 whatever happens to how much expectation can you have. Nobody expects you to write 10 pages. You're

00:23:41.840 getting up out of the seat in 40 minutes. So whatever happens, happens. And sometimes I grind out a couple

00:23:48.600 of sentences and end up just staring into space. And other times, um, I have to pack up my stuff

00:23:54.200 and jump off the train before the doors close and they take it back to the train yard or something

00:23:58.420 because I got on a roll. Um, so that's how my day starts. Now I'm someone who's fortunate to do what

00:24:07.780 they love. So writing is my day job or, you know, creating stuff is my day job. So parts of it are

00:24:14.620 long periods of, of writing these screenplays and teleplays. So I'll end up in my office shortly

00:24:20.760 after getting off the train and then I'll have a day of writing ahead of me. But the day of writing

00:24:25.460 at times isn't even as concentrated as the 40 minutes because the phone will start ringing.

00:24:31.760 There'll be stuff to deal with. Brian and I, um, you know, we could just be like in a different

00:24:36.840 headspace where one of us wants to talk something through and the other one wants to write something

00:24:40.960 down or one guy wants to write dialogue and the other guy wants to keep going with the outline.

00:24:46.220 So, you know, out of the bigger portion of the day, sometimes you're just looking for a way to

00:24:53.780 capture quality minutes also. Gotcha. That's what it is. I remember when I was younger, um,

00:24:59.760 trying to make everything perfect and clear my day so I could write for hours and cover page after

00:25:04.800 a page and it was, it was almost crippling. And then I read something that Carver wrote about

00:25:10.980 writing, Raymond Carver, great short story writer. And he said he'd always planned on being a novelist,

00:25:17.160 but he had kids when he was young and it was always, he had to be a teacher to make money.

00:25:22.060 And every night it was like he had to help doing the laundry and cleaning the dishes and making his

00:25:28.200 kids lunches the next day. And he realized he was never going to have more than a 45 minute or hour,

00:25:32.740 two hour patch in his life. And he better write something that he could finish in that amount of

00:25:37.860 time. So he started writing short stories and just gave, you know, forgot about the novels and

00:25:42.360 became one of the best ever. Wow. So yeah, the constraints helped him.

00:25:47.280 Yeah. You know, I guess you got to find a way to, to make these limitations work for you because

00:25:51.500 otherwise they really are going to be limitations. Yeah. So this is something interesting about you.

00:25:56.680 Brian told me you have a background in boxing and martial arts, correct? Yeah. I've been,

00:26:02.740 doing that stuff for years. Um, you know, not as a serious, I'm not out there like as a club

00:26:10.240 fighter, even amateur fighter. I gotta, I have to, um, protect the mainframe, you know, I'll spar,

00:26:17.480 I'll wear headgear and it won't be too crazy. Generally I'll be sparring with trainers now instead of

00:26:23.220 guys at the gym. But I, I've been boxing for a while. I've done martial arts. I do, um,

00:26:29.300 Brazilian jujitsu. I'm into it. It's, it's, um, I love, I love MMA and I'm getting kind of on the

00:26:39.900 older side for that. I'm 47, but it keeps you in great shape and it just, it makes you feel like

00:26:44.820 alive, you know, whenever I go to do some of this, but like tennis or golf or something, I just,

00:26:50.060 it's like sleepwalking. And when, when you're in there rolling with somebody or sparring,

00:26:55.020 you just really feel alive. Yeah. So, I mean, it's kind of interesting that there's like a lot

00:26:59.100 of those like manly writers, right. That we think of as iconic ones, like Hemingway, uh, Jack London,

00:27:04.100 both were avid boxers. And I I've read, there was a, this guy, he's a philosopher, philosophy

00:27:09.800 professor, I forgot where, but he wrote an essay. He's a boxer too. Um, how philosopher boxing has

00:27:16.880 helped them in philosophy. And I'm curious, has, has taking part in martial arts boxing,

00:27:24.140 has it helped you in any ways with your like creative and intellectual battles in your work?

00:27:31.460 Um, it's helped me in numerous ways, I'd say. I mean, for one, any, any experiential information

00:27:40.020 that I gain by practicing this stuff has been put on its feet in my books because Frank Bear lives in

00:27:48.300 a world where he's not doing this stuff as sport. You know, he's constantly like, he's living this rough

00:27:52.940 and tumble life as this private investigator. So I can use the details that I've learned for him.

00:27:59.720 You know, he's a guy who is an experienced street fighter and he's a big, tough guy and he knows

00:28:07.700 firearms. He's, he, he knows hand to hand and all that stuff. So there's always scenes in the books

00:28:15.540 that cover it that, that, that I get to inform with a lot of real life detail. So that's great. But

00:28:23.680 I think what you're asking is what does it do on a psychological level? And, you know, pursuing

00:28:33.600 filmmaking or writing novels is definitely a discipline because you can only go little by little

00:28:41.480 and it's daunting and it takes a long time. And there's a lot of room for self doubt. And there's

00:28:48.060 a lot of ways that you can get distracted and get off course. Even if you have deadlines, there's

00:28:54.240 always a way you can make up an excuse if you're not careful. So training in these arts is super,

00:29:01.420 you have to be super dedicated. And that's one of the reasons why I keep the sparring or the rolling

00:29:09.180 and jujitsu in there because that'll force me to keep up the strength training and force me to keep

00:29:15.400 up the cardio because the downside of not doing those things is so vivid. When you go into the

00:29:22.800 third round against some guy who's 25 years old and works in the gym as a boxing trainer and does it

00:29:28.460 all day long. And now, you know, whatever, whatever semblance of skill you had starts to fade because

00:29:34.980 you're crapping out and you have no more gas because you haven't been doing your running and

00:29:39.880 lifting and everything. It's a disaster. I mean, you're, you're totally hosed at that point. You're

00:29:45.760 just going to immediately get physical pain as your reward. So it forces you to keep up the discipline.

00:29:53.620 And then that does transfer over. Um, because sitting there and writing a hard scene or doing something,

00:30:02.360 you know, rewriting a book or something, it's just not going to seem as difficult if you've

00:30:08.220 put yourself through the roadwork and all that stuff. It's a mindset.

00:30:12.780 Gotcha. Um, boxing runs in your family, uh, your dad or your grandfather, excuse me,

00:30:18.100 uh, was a boxer and he actually bought Joe Lewis for the heavyweight championship of the world.

00:30:23.840 Tell me about your grandfather and how did that fight go down?

00:30:26.400 Yeah. My grandfather was, um, his name was John paycheck and the country singer guy, you know,

00:30:33.520 that take this job and shove it guy, Johnny paycheck took his name for my grandfather,

00:30:37.100 but the stage name, but, um, yeah, he was, uh, he lived on the South side of Chicago. He was super

00:30:45.740 poor growing up. He got into boxing. He was really good. He was the top prospect in the U S he fought

00:30:53.360 golden gloves for the U S he won the golden gloves against Ireland and knocked this guy out, broke his

00:30:59.160 jaw. He, so he was a top prospect when he was like 19 or 20 years old and he was a heavyweight,

00:31:08.000 but it's ironic. Cause I don't think he touched one 90. I think he was like one 88, something like

00:31:13.520 that, you know, very small sort of heavyweight. And Joe Lewis wasn't super big either, but he was

00:31:17.640 definitely bigger than my, my grandfather. So my grandfather was having a really great string of

00:31:22.740 fights through the Midwest. And it was around the time when, when Joe Lewis got drafted into the

00:31:27.920 army and they knew he was going to go in like six months or a year or something like that.

00:31:32.160 So they organized the bum of the month club, you know, what's pejoratively called that now,

00:31:37.720 um, where they wanted to book him like a fight a month. So, so he could make a bunch of money before

00:31:42.880 he went into the army and couldn't fight for a while. Um, so they started to reach out to these likely

00:31:50.400 prospects and, you know, I'd seen, I've seen footage of the fight and it's, it's so hard to

00:31:58.580 watch because there's my grandfather and he, he gets knocked down three times in the first round.

00:32:05.160 He survives the first round in the second round. He, he gets taken out with a, I think it's like a 0.93

00:32:10.380 left hook, brutal left hook. And I, and I remember talking to him about it when I was young, when he was

00:32:16.200 still alive, he, he said, you know, when I went in that night, I was dry. I couldn't get a sweat

00:32:22.180 going cause I was nervous. And he said, when he hit me with his jab, I felt that it hurt me.

00:32:27.720 And he said that he'd never been, you know, he wouldn't get hurt by a jab. You get, you get

00:32:32.500 thrown off a little by a jab, but Lewis's jab actually hurt him. And before long it was over.

00:32:38.340 And, you know, I used to always think about it. I used to, the thing that I learned about,

00:32:45.540 about him as a fighter was that he was extremely tough. He, he didn't become a legend, but he sort

00:32:54.740 of, he got a shot at a legend. He got pretty close. And the realities of like the fear and the pain

00:33:00.900 hearing it from, from a guy who'd been in there was totally eyeopening because as a fight fan,

00:33:05.700 you never actually hear about that. Nobody ever admits that in a post fight interview,

00:33:09.140 you know, they just say like it wasn't their night or whatever. So there was that side that

00:33:14.220 I learned back in the day, but it's funny as I got older, one of the first things I wrote,

00:33:19.720 I think the first thing I published was in ring magazine. Actually, it was a story about my

00:33:23.180 grandfather and it touched on that fight and stuff like that. Um, but as I got older, I learned

00:33:29.820 something else. This guy reached out to me, an old man who was friends with my grandfather reached out

00:33:34.460 to me, um, after the article came out and he told me how the fight came together. And, and that was

00:33:40.920 a real education in the way the world worked, which was, he, he wasn't just some rude who thought that

00:33:46.700 he was going to be Joe Lewis. In fact, when, when the fight offer came in, they said, you know,

00:33:52.540 we want you to fight. I can't remember the date exactly, 1941 at the garden in June or something 0.93

00:33:57.320 like that, Madison square garden. And he and his camp said, the kid's not ready. He needs another year.

00:34:03.280 So we're going to turn down the fight. And the promoters strong armed him and said,

00:34:08.080 he'll either, he'll either be there that night at the garden or he'll never fight in the garden

00:34:12.080 for the rest of his career. And it was like an amazing firsthand lesson and just how crooked the

00:34:20.440 game has been and how it's always been that way. So I felt, I, you know, I didn't just feel like

00:34:27.700 he was an athlete who lost. I felt for him as a young man who got, who got bowled into something

00:34:33.480 that was bigger than him, that there was no way he could have actually pulled off.

00:34:37.360 Yeah. And you just have to take it, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's like, I feel like we've

00:34:41.740 all been in one of those situations where you're sort of forced into something and you just have to

00:34:46.140 make the best of it.

00:34:48.260 Yeah. I mean, sometimes you just find yourself taking it and you just hope you can take it like a man.

00:34:53.420 Yeah. Well, David, where can, uh, this has been a great conversation. Where can people find out

00:34:58.720 more about your work? And when does the next book come out?

00:35:02.440 Well, then, so the next book comes out on, uh, Tuesday, March 24th and it's called Signature Kill.

00:35:10.720 And my website is davidlevine.com and my last name's L-E-V-I-E-N. So a little unusual spelling,

00:35:18.480 davidlevine.com, L-E-V-I-E-N.com. And, and all the infos on there.

00:35:24.760 Fantastic. Well, David Levine, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:35:28.200 Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

00:35:29.840 Our guest today was David Levine. He is a screenwriter, movie producer, and director,

00:35:34.240 and a novelist. And his latest novel in the Frank Baer series dropped last month. It's called

00:35:40.060 Signature Kill. If you're a big fan of detective novels, and if you're not, go pick it up. I think

00:35:45.580 you'll, you'll find a new genre of literature you're going to like. I'm a big fan of it. You

00:35:49.920 can find that on amazon.com. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:35:56.680 For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at

00:35:59.880 artofmanliness.com. And if you'd like to support our podcast and support the website, one thing you

00:36:04.480 do is go to store.artofmanliness.com and pick up some of our Art of Manliness gear that we have

00:36:09.880 there. We've got a fantastic, really manly coffee mug we've gotten rare reviews about. We put a

00:36:15.560 whole bunch of t-shirts on clearance for the spring. So go check out the clearance section.

00:36:19.760 Anyways, some great stuff there. Go check it out. Again, store.artofmanliness.com. Your

00:36:23.420 purchases will help support the continuation of the site and the podcast. And until next time,

00:36:28.720 this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - April 16, 2015

#110： Hardboiled Detectives, Boxing, and Creativity With David Levien

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript