Mike Sager (Esquire) talks about profiling an ugly dude in Hollywood

brandonsneed · May 7, 2012

Hey everyone, I have another interview for those of you interested in such things. This time around it's Mike Sager talking about "Ugly," his latest piece in Esquire's May 2012 issue, a profile of Warren Durso, a guy in Hollywood who is, well, ugly.

Link: http://brandonsneed.com/home/2012/5/7/stories-stories-mike-sager-on-his-esquire-profile-ugly.html

Excerpt:

I always find a way to love everyone I write about. Someone once said I would have found something loveable about Hitler. And to that I say, well, Eva Braun must have loved him, right? Everyone is not 100 percent pure. There had to be some humanity in there somewhere.

It goes to this point: when you write about people I think you have to suspend your disbelief. Every single person has a different constellation of reality. You’re not choosing a mate. You’re learning a person. I enjoy trying to understand the way people think and live, whether I agree or not. I like finding what’s common about people in our differences. It’s what’s alike about people that makes me able to understand all the differences. Over the years I’ve hung with marines, gangbangers, Brooke Burke and her twin Playboy centerfold friends, young artsy heroin addicts on the lower east side. I think I have a strong sense of self; it allows me to be with people I don’t agree with or even, in the extreme, people I find abhorrent, like when I, a Jewish man with a bi racial child, went to visit the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho.

I look at these anthropological stories as love affairs without the sex. I come to town. We date, we get to know each other, a relationship grows… I get so into the person. The relationship is a little one-sided because I am the guy asking all the questions. But you don’t spend five weeks on and off with someone and not tell your own story, too. Or at least some of it. I am still in touch with many of the people I have written about—or their wife or their mother or someone who is left. The six hundred pound man’s wife (he died last year). John Holmes’ former teen mistress. The Man of Tomorrow and his girlfriend, who are both now successful recording artists. A whole bunch of Marine vets. A heroin addict and talented musician I wrote about 20 years ago. The Palestinian on the west bank who showed me the Intifada six months in to the struggle.

When I was doing the Durso story I was recovering from having several injections in my neck to try to relieve some old sports injuries. Riding around three to 15 hours a day with anyone can be difficult. Warren was sweet and supportive and he wanted to please. He insisted I wear my cervical collar when I drove, even tho I didn’t want to appear uncool or draw attention to myself and my problems. And he was so open with himself. Hell, he let us photograph him naked.

I loved where he was coming from, his personal philosophies…even though some of them were kind of rationalized… but who among us doesn’t rationalize? Yes, sometimes he got on my nerves… like when he would do that British accent I write about… and keep doing it for an hour or ten straight, basically jibbering. Yes, he had a little bit of performance anxiety. If there was silence sometimes he felt he had to fill it. No big deal. And Durso is a conspiracy theorist. OMG. After he’d described himself in the mirror in my room, and after, in a fit of closeness, he told me the story of his pass being refused by Miss Transylvania, he started talking about conspiracy theories, contrails, the moon walk, etc. Fuck! I thought I was gonna jump off the balcony of the third floor room at The Standard in West Hollywood were I always stay cuz it’s cheap and cool and the staff treats me well.

But you know what? I listened anyway. And I acted interested. Because, over last thirty five years or so I’ve been doing this job, I’ve had to come to terms with the idea that, as Bob Green once put it, I make my living by “scraping out people’s insides” and exploiting them to my own grand benefit. I take and take from these people.

One thing I’ve sussed out over the years: It seems to bring comfort to people when I listen to them in a loving, accepting way. I’ve done that all my life, in person and professionally. So that’s what I try to give back to my subjects. I give them ears and understanding. I touch people a lot, pat them on the back. I feed them. I thank them. I hear. I think of it as my ministry.

Then I go home and I write what I think is the truth. I pull no punches. But I have more perspective to work with because my subject and I have opened up to each other. I am respectful because they have helped me to understand what it is like to be them. And they have helped me to feed my family.
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Dick Whitman · May 8, 2012

Brandon - Thanks for conducting the interview and thanks for posting. Loved the original piece and loved to read Sager's process and so forth. (I'm a sucker for journalists talking about craft - I used to skip right past the old ASNE Best Newspaper Writing volumes straight to the reporter interviews).

Sager is tremendous. I posted one of his stories here a while back about a wrongly convicted man and we talked about the craft of storytelling in the piece, etc., etc.

Love guys and women who just tell stories.

brandonsneed · May 9, 2012

Thanks Dick, you're welcome. So glad you liked it. And yeah, Sager's great. Great writer, great guy.

PCLoadLetter · May 9, 2012

Sager's book "Scary Monsters and Super Freaks" is a terrific collection of his work. Really good read.

Amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/6usco2x

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Mike Sager (Esquire) talks about profiling an ugly dude in Hollywood

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Mike Sager (Esquire) talks about profiling an ugly dude in Hollywood

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