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to New York City-you know, I'm from that
area. I had no idea of what I wanted to do, but I
sort of wanted to write TV commercials. I kind
of thought that it was cool. And that was back
in the days of Alka Seltzer commercials-those
great commercials-and I never really thought
beyond that. I just liked to do something that
my friends might think was funny or cool. I didn't have any great overarching ambitions at all.
That came later.
So was there a moment, a catalyst, that made you
realize that you wanted to be a writer?
Actually, I was just writing about this the other
day. The first job that I got was as an office boy
at Grey Advertising in New York that worked on
the Revlon account. You know, it was all lipstick
and hair coloring and stuff like that. And one of
my jobs-I made like $105 a week-was just to
carry copy, the copywriters' copy. I would just
carry it from one office to another. And from
time to time, I would sort of look at it and read
the copy. It was stuff like, " Colors of Autumn, "
and I would look at it, and I thought, " You
know, I could write this shit. " So, I just sort of
thought that maybe I could do that. Eventually, I
got a portfolio together and I did get a job in
advertising. That was kind of how I started as a
writer at age 23, or something like that.
I was gonna synopsize this story, but your story is
so good, and you are such a good storyteller. Can
you tell us the story about that period, about being
a Marine-thank you for you service. Your story is
fascinating. You slept in the back of your car. Can
you just tell it as you would tell it to a grandkid or
something?
Well, I'll try not to make this too long and boring or anything. I'm sure that a lot of the people
that are listening to this right now will have stories exactly like this and be able to relate to this.
When I was working at the ad agency, I had a
boss named Ed Hannibal, and one day he wrote
a novel, and it was a hit. Like overnight he was a
star, and he quit. So, I thought to myself, " Shit, I
can do that. Sounds like a good idea. " So I quit
too! And I was married and living in New York
City at the time. And the short version is that I
spent something like two years writing a novel. I
had no business... I didn't have a clue in the
world of what a book was. And on the one-yard
line of finishing it-99.9% of the way through-
I just choked, and resistance, which I didn't know
what it was at the time, overcame me. I blew up
everything, sort of self-destructed, and woundup kind of... I would say I sort of dropped down
to the bottom of the middle class, and I spent
about the next six or seven years traveling
around the country working all kinds of jobs. I

66 RECORDING February 2021

drove trucks, I worked on offshore oil rigs, I
picked fruit. When I came back to the New York,
I drove a taxi, I taught school. I did all kinds of
things and was absolutely at the bottom of the
food chain.
And at one point-I'm giving you the long version here, Michael-I had $2,700 that I thought
would last me a year. And it did last me a year,
and I rented a little house, and I finished my first
book. I finally actually finished one. But I couldn't sell it, so I had to go back to work, and I
worked a bunch of other jobs. I worked in
advertising again, and I wrote another book. It
took about two years to write the [second] book,
and I couldn't sell that one either.
And now we're like maybe 14 years into this
odyssey of mine, and throughout this whole
thing, my family and people that I knew when I
was younger would say to me constantly,
" What's your problem, man? Why do you keep
doing this? Can't you just stop doing this? You
know you're killing yourself. " But I couldn't stop,
and with my second book that didn't sell, I'd
show it to friends, and they would get that plastic smile on their face, you know.
Anyway, I decided then that I would go out to
Hollywood and try to write for the movies. So, I
figured that if I'm failing at novel-writing, why
don't I go out and fail at screenwriting too? So, I
did go out there and had about a 10-year
career-I wouldn't glorify it by saying that I was
on the " B " list; I was probably on the " C " list
most of that time. But I did work with a partner
for a while, a guy named Ron Shusett, who did
the first Alien and did Total Recall. He was a star,
and I was kind of his slave. He was more of a
producer/writer, and I was more of a
writer/writer. But at least I was finally making a
living as a writer, even though I wasn't doing
anything I particularly wanted to do. But I was
learning the principals of storytelling. You
know, I was in the trenches, and I was getting

" I wouldn't glorify it by saying that I
was on the 'B' list; I was probably on
the 'C' list most of that time. "
-Steven Pressfield
hard knocks. Like one of the terrible movies that
Ron and I wrote was a movie called King Kong
Lives. We did a bunch of terrible movies, and
one of the reviews in Variety said, " Ronald
Shusett and Steven Pressfield, we hope these
aren't their real names for their parents' sake. "
So there was a lot of that. And finally, after I
think now it's up to like 24 years or more than
that of trying, I finally had the idea for another
book, and that became The Legend of Bagger
Vance. I actually hated the movie, but the book is
much better than the movie. But at least I finally

had done something that came from my heart,
and it sold and it made money.
I think I was like 54 years old at that time. So
there have been about 20 books, I think, since
then. I haven't done any movies since then, but
The Legend of Bagger Vance was the moment
when I finally sort of broke through in terms of
being able to pay the rent and doing what I want
to do.
I want to say, of all those books that I have written since then, I'm proud of all of them. I don't
feel like a whore or prostitute in any way; I've
been doing what I wanted to do; and it took like
30 years to get there. So that's my story in a
nutshell.
It is such a great story. I mean, being a roustabout
on an oil rig? That's something that very few people will ever get to do-a pretty
rough-and-tumble job, and dangerous. But the fact
that you lived in your car for a while... I mean, you
really gave it up to live your dream. And the fact
that it took you 27 years... 27 years! I mean, I've
been running this company now for just under 29
years; I can't imagine 27 years of not succeeding at
this thing that just lives inside of you and eats
away at you. It's like, do this, do this! There's nothing else in the world.
As I told you before we went live on air, I was sitting here writing these questions last night at two
o'clock in the morning, because I just wasn't happy
with what I had. I'm working on three hours of
sleep but loving this interview, because you are so
inspirational. You clearly did have the wisdom and
insight. And this book (Michael holds up, The War of
Art), literally, every page, is worthy of changing
your life. You can't just keep turning the pages, get
to the end of the book and go, " That was good. " But
every page, makes you think about what you're
doing in your own life.
So did you start collecting the ideas, and all this
introspection and understanding of yourself, and
understanding what resistance was. Did you keep a
diary all these years? How did you have all this
material?
Um, I don't know. I lived it and I remembered it.
But sort of the underlying... Someone was talking yesterday about Steve Jobs, that he used to
go around Apple, and he would say to people,
" What business are we in? " That was his question. And then he would ask them, " What
business are we really in? " That was question
number two. I sort of apply that to writing or
anything, and I say to myself, like in a book, I'll
say, " What is this book about? " And then I'll ask
myself, " What is it really about? What is it about
at the deepest level? " And the story that I just
told you about me bouncing around all the jobs
and stuff, I don't even know what that's about.
Continued on page 69

Recording - February 2021

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