Renowned authors John Grisham and Michael Lewis brought hundreds to McAlister Auditorium on the third day of the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University at a conversion moderated by Snapchat’s Michael Lynton.
The two friends kept the energy in the room high, sharing stories of turning novels into their first movies. Grisham now has nine movies under his belt, including “The Firm” starring Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Gene Hackman. Grisham said the movies had a “tremendous impact” on his career. “Today, those movies are still selling books.”
Grisham said he doesn’t play a big part in how the movies get made. Lewis shared the same philosophy: take the money up front and “kiss it goodbye.”
“I think the movie industry would much rather the author be dead,” Lewis joked. “Quite honestly, they don’t care what I have to say.”
“Blind Side” was the first of Lewis’s novels to be made into a film. He described the experience of seeing it on the screen for the first time, “I cried. I laughed. I cried again. I thought, ‘How often does this happen in a movie?’”
Even though it wasn’t an exact replication of his book, “What was working, when it worked, I took complete credit for,” Lewis joked.
Grisham said when picking someone to adapt his books, “You just want them to remain true to the spirit of the story … The story has been proven to work in the marketplace. Stay true to the material.”
‘The State of the Union: A Deep Dive into America’s Political Landscape’
Meanwhile in the Marshall Family Commons, Jonathan Alter, Jonathan Martin and Tim Miller took the stage in a conversation moderated by Stephanie Grace, a columnist at NOLA.com. The panelists – all political pundits, columnists and authors in their own right – spoke on issues concerning the United States’ political outlook.
Martin first recounted what former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said to him in the late hours of Jan. 6, 2021.
“The precise quote was ‘[Trump] put a gun to his head and he pulled the trigger,’” Martin said. “I think the consequential moment in Mitch McConnell’s political life … [was] that he had a chance to at least try to end Trumpism in January, February of 2021, and he didn’t.”
Alter held firm his belief that President Donald Trump will be remembered as a convicted felon: “If [the trial] was on TV, he would not be President.”
All three speakers spoke to some degree about the idiosyncrasy of the contemporary political landscape, holding that Democrats needed to act in some way.
Martin, however, argued that the combination of Trump’s sweeping actions will eventually generate enough pushback to hurt his political support. Miller countered, arguing that the midterms were still 15 months away, and what has happened in the past 70 days is not enough to know anything about the future.
Warning against ignoring potential breaking points for voters, Miller said, “We don’t really know what will be the thing that lights a spark and lights a fire.”
In a closing glance to the future, the panelists were asked to throw out names of possible future political heavy-weights. On the right, Vice President JD Vance and journalist Tucker Carlson were possibilities, highlighting the dominance of Trumpism in politics. Martin, however, sees a possible future where the Republican primary is much more politically-diverse if Trump’s poll numbers fall to levels similar to former President Joe Biden.
On the left, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was mentioned, which was met with large applause from the audience, while Sen. John Fetterman was met with a more mixed response. Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Jason Crow were also mentioned, but the bottomline from the panelists was that the Democrats need fundamental change to come up with a future.
‘Notorious: Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech’
Earlier in the day, The New York Times columnist and author Maureen Dowd shared her experience reporting in a conversation with author Ken Auletta.
Dowd experiments with writing from a Shakespearan perspective, focusing on what characterizes an interviewee as self destructive, moral or immoral. “[Interviewing presidents and candidates] is very much like Shakespeare where … the hero becomes his own worst enemy, and that is what you see with a lot of presidents,” Dowd said.
Dowd has interviewed people from all professional disciplines, specifically prominent figures in politics, innovation and the arts. She said, “I always thought of Hollywood and Washington as twin capitals of illusion.” Dowd also considers Silicon Valley to be similar in this respect, with elaborate and controversial operations.
Dowd said interviewees of similar political alignment expect their flaws to be exempt from her reporting as a courtesy. “But I want to write about people’s flaws in real time because if they read the column, they can fix those flaws,” Dowd said.
She also alluded to the evolving nature of journalism. The New York Times now allows for harsh descriptive words to be used in headlines. “We can call the president a liar,” Dowd said. In the past, she would “constantly be in the thesaurus looking up a synonym for liar for Dick Cheney.”
‘The Power of Perception: Race, Class and the American Narrative’
Directly after in the same room, comedian and author W. Kamau Bell, journalist Charles Blow and historian Sarah Lewis spoke about systemic racism and classism in a conversation moderated by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu posed questions regarding systemic racism and classism.
Lewis began by debunking our perception of what it means to be caucasian. There is an area known as the Caucasus region along eastern Europe and western Asia, where “caucasian” classifies the regional people, not their race. The adoption of this term to represent whiteness is unfounded. “When are we going to give up the lie that there’s any basis for this racial regime of hierarchy that tells us that there’s some legitimate claim for superiority at all?” Lewis said.
“Comedy is the best way to communicate anything to people,” Bell argued. Comedy indicates an audience is listening and understanding by inciting a reaction among people. It is up to the American people to be incentivized to listen and learn from the Black community’s marginalization.
“The problem is not a lack of knowledge, it’s not a lack of discussion, it’s not a lack of literature, it’s not a lack of art. It is a lack of curiosity,” Blow said.
