[inaudible conversations] at afternoon and thanks for coming. We cant believe you are still coming to these things. This is scotts fifth panel. Scott will be doing his part fully in mind. But i want to start, im going to tell you some things about scott turow. My friend and bandmate and you all know that he is probably the most accomplished legal thriller writer fall times and im sure there are very few who didnt. You know everything about him now and you probably all have samples. But there are two things you dont know about scott. First of all i performed at his wedding. I hope we can get some point to discuss it. Scott got married last summer in wisconsin and asked me if i would perform the ceremony. I am a notary public in the state of florida. [laughter] and floored it means i can do anything. I can sentence people to death in florida. [laughter] but it didnt have a lot of legal standing in wisconsin. Scott wanted me to do it and we got into this scott sent me the emails that the news york times wanted to cover his wedding and he told them that i was going to perform the ceremony. The times jumped on that. That seemed like a watergate level scandal. Like what . What do you mean dave barry is going to perform your wedding in wisconsin and . Got because he is a lawyer proof to them through the satisfaction of the news york times in a way that i could in fact legally perform and you want me to give you the legal reason for that . Its late in the day but okay. Wisconsin has a provision that allows for whats called self solemnizing marriages meaning its an exchange of vows. Iso New York Times editor, this is his business. He knows all these laws. He said well that only applies if the religion in question allows for self solemnizing wedding so one of the great things about the jewish is theres always something you dont know about teen jewish. It turns out that the jewish faith is one that allows for self solemnizing wedding. The exchange of vows as the bride and groom or the bride in the bride and the groom and the groom whoever it is that consecrates the marriage in the presence of a rabbi or any other presiding so even dave barry. Its not material whether the marriage has been the self solemnizing sound like an illicit act . The one thing that i have not confessed to dave yet however is two days before the wedding adrian i went to the Kenosha County courthouse and said we are here to apply for a marriage license. They said you had to come in six weeks ago. Despite the allan bense of dave ceremony the fact of the matter is that the barry family for years has been as a so you would think he would be he certainly the fun is human being i know. He did take it seriously and he was wonderful at it. You have to admit there was a point. You say repeat after me and they do. [laughter] this is something that scott routinely does in our band. Keep the words while thing, you make my heart sing. [laughter] you make everything groovy and the dead. I do whatever dave tells me. Im so grateful to be in this band that when he tells me to sweep up afterwards i thank him. The other thing you dont know about scott turow is that he has no spleen. They are concerned, dave. This is not a recent development. He got here without his spleen though. The way i found this out was typically when the rock armor mangers performed right afterwards we would go a barn. We performed in new york city and we went to a bar and i found myself sitting between scott turow on my right and roy blunt senior on my left both guys that i like. I had a few dozen, i cant remember what they were but averages. I was not focusing too well but im listening roy has some long funny stories that scott would tell these really detailed things about his spleen. Im listening in and i finally said i had to enter up to him and i said wait do you have a spleen or dont you . Got said no i dont. Okay and then im looking at roi for a while and im hearing more from scott did it sounded to me like he had a spleen. So i said wait, you said you dont have a spleen and he said no i dont have a spleen and thats the point. Then im listening to scott again and i swear hes talking like a man with this. [laughter] so i said it third time i thought you said you dont have a spleen. He pulled up my sleeve and got out a sharpie and wrote no spleen in big letters on my arm. So we all go off to bed and we have an early train to go to boston from new york. We got up really early in the hotel and they stagger toward the bathroom and i looked in the mirror and i see theres something written on my arm. I have no memory of how that got there. This is actually true. Halep doubted it said no spleen on my arm and you know that the urban legend about the businessman who wakes up in the hotel and its kidney has been said. [laughter] its just a horrible moment. I thought oh somebody harvested my spleen. But heres this. I didnt know how to check because like i said i dont know where my spleen is. Scott doesnt know where his is either just for the record. [laughter] i have pictures of mine. Perhaps you can show them later. But then my brain started to reboot. People are always saying physicians remove your spleen for recreational pursuit purposes. You would have to be an idiot to harvest a spleen. He is so he is harvested his lead you know. [laughter] so anyway those are my two facts facts. Now im going to turn it over to scott. So actually dave did marry us and he really did a magnificent job although i was somewhat taken aback a few months before the event when he sat me down and he said all right i really want you to tell me what you want. He was you know very serious about it and i thought about this. Dave has a wonderful marriage to Michelle Kaufmann a fine sportswriter in miami. I realized theres a reason he takes this seriously. His marriage has added a great deal to his life and i think he wants the same for us. I was grateful for the banter but also the soul. To one extent this is reciprocal even though was between dave and a dear friend of ours who is a Roman Catholic priest and father john performed the benediction afterwards. We both thought dave had the requisite stuff. I actually have performed a wedding at daves brother sam who was also a member and unfortunately his late wife Kathy Goldmark who was the founder of the rock by the remainders to put all of these writers together with musical aspirations. In all cases but one, some musical failings. They asked me if. Knows what reason if i would perform their wedding. The city of San Francisco where they were married literally anyone can marry anybody through any preacher. As a result there are you can go to city hall and see that some people have been married either dog and there is literally a pop round on the license. I guess that kathy and sam decided i might have been as good as a dog and they asked me to perform this wedding. I did get ordained in the universal life church. Did you really . Yeah, in order to do this. I paid my 50. This was the second marriage for each of them and it was a great wedding. We were talking about it last night. It was just a wonderful wedding. The celebrations went on for several days. I look out and kathy knows every musician in the city of San Francisco and just a wonderful cast of characters with lots of bay area live and some people i hadnt seen in decades. I look out at this multitude and i say well this is the first wedding you have ever been at where the official is more nervous than the bride and groom groom. Under the hoop up because it was a jewish wedding he pipes up and says well thats because we have all done this before. [laughter] bonnier view try to get dave to be serious its really a waste of time but i do want, since we are here at a writers festival i did want to ask people to focus on one thing which is we all know funny people and granted that dave barry is the funniest human being that i know know, but what we dont tend to think about very much is most of those people cant get it on the page. What dave does not olmeda when hes in person being incredibly funny but the reason you are all here to listen to him and his sidekick is because of what he is able to do on the page. He actually sweats bullets. In the old days his columns in whatever else his wonderful year in review. If you havent read his summary of 2017 i encourage you to go on line and read it. He is a great writer and people dont often think about that. Because you know none of us except dave can remember a punchline 10 minutes after we have heard a joke so theres a certain ephemeral nature to humor and great humor writers like mark twain. Hes also a member of the band. There are the certain amount of skills. If you wanted to actually rest on what it was like to be a writer it would probably be interesting. The other thing that people dont know about dave or dont think about is that he is a journalist and he is a person like all great journal is that i have known of almost infinite curiosity. There are the oddities of Human Behavior and human circumstance that are endlessly fascinating. A lot of what goes into those wonderful columns or pieces or books is actually a good deal of reportage. I dont know how many olympics have there have been that you havent attended . Not as a competitor. Ive been to a bunch. You have gone all over the world and done screwing things but hes a really serious firstclass journalist. I will blow smoke up scotts astana matt lochte stunted me but we are not going to keep doing that, talking about how great we are, okay . He cant do that. [laughter] the thing about it, the reporting thing they did start out as a reporter and it did help me immensely. I think its a lot easier to make fun of the news and conventional journalism if you used at the follow them. Although i was not, i wasnt that good at journalism. I was okay at observing but the part and this is what stopped me was when interacting with people like when you are reporter the writing is a minimal part of what you do. Much of what you do is talking to people. Youre calling them up and bugging them are nagging them are u. Talk to people who are hostile. To be good at journalism you have to be able to focus when people are really angry at you or unhappy with the mere fact that you are i was terrible at that rate i would be reminded of it sometimes. I made a point over the years and i still do of going to news events not just writing about it but going and watching them before i started to write about it. Id always go to New Hampshire to go to the conventions. These are wonderful sources of humor. A terrible way to run the country but terrific sources of humor. I will give you my low point example of why it was so glad i stopped being a reporter. Every now and then i will find myself in a classic journalist at a real news event. This was in New Hampshire in 1992 and a think i was writing a column for the New Hampshire primary. One day, you look at the schedule and see who is around at who is doing what. I spent the day following then First Lady Barbara Bush around. I was a member of the press corps with the first lady and she was in town and we went all over New Hampshire to campaign on behalf of her husband president george bush, the first one. It was a big deal, big motorcade, big entourage of New Hampshire politicians and secret service and everything and the press box full of real washington reporters and me. In the back of the bus and id love that. I loved watching it all happen and not have to be part of it rate i could make fun of it but i didnt have to deal with it. I didnt have to pretend that i cared or get anything right. I could make stuff up. So they go around and at the end of the day theres this big rally in the hotel in New Hampshire a packed ballroom, all the speeches and mrs. Bush comes on. Then i thought it was all over and a photographer who had been with us the whole day brings up the press corps on the stage with mrs. Bush. Its a quiet moment and he puts us in a semicircle and he brings the first lady over and puts her right next to me. Gone from look working the background and sadly i am on the stage in a hotel full of people with the press corps. The first lady is right next to me. The picture i have in my mind is saying nothing, dont make a fool of yourself. You know how your brain is not always alert to the rest of your body . I looked down and my mouth is moving. [laughter] i said to barbara bush and his loud perky voice, and she does know who i am and we had never met. I said i have the same suit as your son jeb. [laughter] and i have no idea why he said this. You are nervous and you want to Say Something and i said that and its true. At the time i did before he became governor of florida i shopped at the same supermarket but i dont think the first lady wanted to know that. I wonder if you he shopped at the same supermarket with anybody i know . She said who gives a not with her mouth. With her eisbruck what she said with her mouth is oh we just celebrated jebs 39th birthday and if you think about these two statements they have almost nothing to do with each other but the named jeb. She was a very gracious lady and she recognized immediately was happening. A person in front of her was introduced to this blithering idiot. She was making it look like we were having a conversation which we werent. And i knew thats what was happening. Oh god i cant believe i said that. Thank you mrs. Bush. Thats what im thinking in my mind and my mouth is thinking whoa we are really hitting it off here and i said to her he is very tall. [laughter] this is the conversation i had with barbara bush and she said well he didnt just grow this year. [laughter]. Let me say somebody wanted to hire you is that possible . Fnt yes, with it is possible depends how much money they had. A lot in this room. [laughter] no buyers here. Right. So i wrote presumed innocent i had been a prosecutor a and finished it in the summer in between. The time that i was in Government Service and went into private practice. And you know, the bookended up being bought by ferris and jaru and roger straus the younger who i think of as my publisher roger straus the third. Flew out to chicago because he said he had to meet me. Now, i have to tell you that throughout my life as a would be novelist, i had submitted ol novels to ferris and jaru, and you know, i gotten many rejections from them. Some nice, some not so nice when i was still in college michael who was the editor in chief there, took the time to write me a, you know, a paragraph about a book that i had submitted and i i did put the Publishing House on kind of a pinnacle so heres roger straus the third and he gets on the phone and theres screams in the phone where have you been all of these yearses are and , of course, the answer is knocking on your god damn door. [laughter] so about anyway he keam out with a wonderful lunch he remains very dear friend, a terrific person. And he, as we were in this cab going back to the sears tower where my law office has been now called the wallace hour but still the same office and he says promise me one thing. And he said, i said whats that . He says dont quit your day job. [laughter] and i said why . And he began to tell me that, you know, he thought the book was going to be very successful and hes seen many people ruined by sudden success. And, and i really took what he was saying to heart and i in simple terms it is like if it aingt broke dont fix it. So i managed to write this novel while working fulltime yeah i had had had a spell away from the law to finish it. But i liked being a lawyer. Had many lawyers dont but i still found it really interesting. And i sort of wanted to go through the experience that if i could see desendinging on me literally going from being somebody writing on the commuter train and in, you know, the unfinished basement of the house i was living in. To suddenly being the author of this mega hit best seller. You know about to be turned into a movie. And i did not want to go through that time with sort of that rutter of what i had always done and i just gotten into private practice and i had not done any civil litigation thought it would be interesting to learn about it and and i went along that way. Started my second novel. I was lucky in the sense that my private practice took off very quickly, and i summer that presumed innocent came out, i tried six different cases. And i was really, really busy. An i was about nine months after this and i was in a hotel in kansas city. And why this made any difference, i mean this is not logical but the guy on the other sides on the case one of the big cases north versus boeing and lots of lawyers so one of the guys on the other side he walks in he says you know i saw the back offed innocent on sale downstairs and you know the drugstore in this courthouse and why this was so striking to me i cant begin to tell you but all i know is i was so damn busy as a lawyer that i didnt even know the paperback was coming out because i cant been home long enough to even see what was in my mail and i said, im doing something wrong. And i went to my partners and said look, i need more time to write. I dont to quit. But i need more time to write. And they were very or accommodating then. And they have been for the for the next 30 years. And made it really possible for me to do this. By now, i practice very little law most of what i do and have done in, for the past 20 dwreers mostly pro bono right now firm has gotten a project together which i think is a good one. To try to find a way with a felony conviction on people who have had a blameless life since they left present and fortunately county state Attorney Office established a procedure for that. So thats, thats what im working on now did you ever go into the courtroom now or object i havent [laughter] you go yeah it is [laughter] yes. I had, i was in court. I was recently if nine or ten months ago, and you know it was a silly little case. But of course its not silly and little when you win which we did. So, but, i mean, i was a reasonably good trial lawyer if i wasnt, you know ive seen some people who are utterly magical in the courtroom. I wouldnt say i was. But i certainly have had had my chops and you know i had a great lesson when i started from the u. S. Attorney of man named tom sullivan remains dear, dear friend and is still practicing law well into his 80s and he says Young Lawyers make mistake of thinking that cases are won by by their magic and their or tore skill or genius on cross o examination. Xaiss he said are are won by the facts exactly as it should be, and your job is a lawyer is to two the facts and put had them in front of whoever is deciding the case the the judge or a jury. And it if you learn how to do that, in a relatively clear headed way, you can be a pretty good lawyer and you can be pretty effective in the courtroom, and you may not win style points. But youll win cases. And that i thought that advice was really, really good. But when youre in court did anybody ever acknowledge who you are does that ever come up . Well, if i hear oh i sign aside brief this week and other side was objecting to this brief being filed, and they it was a brief sign by a number of former prosecutors. And they went down the whole list of prosecutors and thats, you know, joe below northwestern law school. So and so you know former assistance states attorney. When they get to me they got write her a fiction of lawyers. [laughter] and if i have if i have heard that line once from opposing counsel i have heard it 800 times. You know, everybody thinks theyre so theyre so original. You know mr. Tour e row an author of fiction, so written some more. So anyway. And its an issue with some judges. Ive had to be some judges you walk in their courtroom and a judge some judges have to be the most important person theyve ever met. And so its for whatever reason my presence seems to have set them off. Ive had i can think of one case wrote i told the client get another lawyer. This judge is just never we cant get rid of the judge and this judge is never going to be happy with the fact that im there. But by and large, my great advantage is that i practice law in the same community where i came of age. And so a lot of people who i appear in front of ive had some contact with, and during the course of my career, and they knew me first as a lawyer. And you know, they are you know theyre fine with me. Weirdly, for many years i didnt think about this at the time but a criminal defense lawyer in chicago named sherman, and in addition to being a wonderful criminal defense lawyer, man for years wrote the young and the restless and he would pry cases and work like a deemen but every he got his pages for young and restless on on amnesia. Thats right. [laughter] you know but the oh, im really your father. [laughter] can i ask you a question . Yeah, of course. So my legal career just so you know of getting out of jury duty many time and dade county, florida. Back to you becoming journalist because theres certain blank spots in my knowledge of your life. You come out of the college in 1969. Right. Its draft year so what did you do . I became a conscientious objector. I did and my lord assigned me to you are supposed to two year was what of service and you do what it tell you and they have me become a bookkeeper for the Episcopal Church and fill out expense report so i was a bookkeeper for two years and it was incredibly boring so i would wanted to become a newspaper guy. So whennives done request two years. Hnches you written for the College Paper . I wrote i yo for the College Paper what i thought were with hilarious columns. And then years later when i was a columnist there was a reunion like my 25th reunion or o something at the college and somebody had come up with a brilliant idea this was like this dance coming like the idea of blowing up a bunch of, they got my columns in blew them up so all arpgd the gym were these columns i had written in the 60s. I thought hilarious when i wrote them. They were awful. There must have been so many drugs involved. [laughter] that i thought they were funny enough and funny to print so it was a lesson to me that you know it is a real problem. And i was with being a sophomore so anyway after that, i went to work at the daily local news in westchester, pennsylvania, sounds like the newspaper superboy delivered right and it was. It was a little westchester, pennsylvania. And it was daily except for unless you counted sunday as a day we didnt do that. But local like if a local resident grew a tomato that looked like Dwight Eisenhower suzanne here i shouldnt [laughter] that you know we would take a picture of it and put it on the front page. So small town paper but complengt experience for me. I learned everything i need to know about journalism in like a couple of months as a daily, and if youre, you know, covering the local school board if youre writing obituaries going to fires, you knew everything in a small town paper and you make every possible mistake. You learn that, if somebody says this name is john smith you ask them how to spell john and how to spell smith. And you do. It turns out youll inevitably get that kind of run and theyll be mad at you. But thats how i got, i guess i loved it. I really loved it. It was horrible pay but it was it was the most fun job i ever had. And i sort of stayed with newspapers forever. As i say because i didnt really like the part where you have to talk to people i went over to the part where you make everything up. Which back, i was a pioneer in that. Now a lot of people are doing that. [laughter] but i started doing that early on. So you once, you once said to me that in order to be funny, you have got to take chances. Yes. So i would like you to recount say the three the three biggest times that the chances didnt quite work with out. [laughter] oh, man. Well you know i got, i mean, it is kind of hard to say that because, like, the thing about writing humor is that it works. It never works for anybody. Anything you write that you think is fun nigh inevitably a certain percentage youre audience will not think it is funny and even another person is beginning to want you fired for it. And right i learned that early on. Theres a group of people there i called them the humor impaired and [laughter] and every column i ever wrote i would get correct ed and i was like think like you cant possibly not know that im kidding here. Like i went to paste once and i wrote some column about it so i could deduct it on my income tax. [laughter] thats not a joke and throw away line of them among sights to see in paris are the louvre, and Leaning Tower of pisa. Just a dumb joke, and hard to believe anybody but i got im not kidding hundreds of letter its about that circled yu know. [laughter] call yourself an expert and you know so you know leaning tour is located in pisa a city in italy so return address i wrote become and i said you are mistaken. The Leaning Tower of pisa was moved to paris in 1978. And [laughter] and i got a letter back from her name was mrs. Herbert of denton, kansas who had her original copy of her original letter to me a copy of my letter back to her with that statement circled and statement mr. Barry i checked with my travel agent, and [laughter] so you cant, you cant you cant win. Theres really no one no simple answer but every single thing ive tried has failed with somebody sometimes more so than other times. Now speaking of failing can we talk about sex . [laughter] i knew you were going to to get there. Talked about to the folks here yet it be testimony or not . Yeah. We with took fair scene that have and did very early this morning. We were out with the birds and the sunrise qor shippers, and scott has a wonderful book called testimony, and its very, not going to its a really interesting book that you will not ever begin to guess you could make a legal thrower out of this topic but sex yes. In there ive written novels a time i thought about writing a sex scene and i got too embarrassed to be sitting there and you know and you put sex scene in your yeanch i put sex scenes in a lot of my novels so i was noting that yeah. So i said to dave last night he was like were walking back to our hotel rooms and one thing im going to ask you is writing sex scenes so dont ask me if i get a rouse while doing it. So he brought it right up and [laughter] and he play on words. Im a professional. [laughter] and he looks at me and he says you have to know right now that that was a mistake so by the way talk about it. Try to picture yourself writing knowing that thousands and thousands of people are going to writing about it writing about having sex. Well, i mean, its part of life, right . As a matter of fact a lot of things that are a part of life we dont write about, thank god theres no bathroom scenes in testimony. I beg to differ. But anyway theres a point where the man character urinates on himself and he does see fit to mention that. And he goes throughout around with his wet u trousers for while. So there are bathroom scenes too. But you feel selfconscience when youre doing it i mean sex, i mean writing about sex . [laughter] you know, i probably feel less selfconscience than other people do because a lot of people want to skip it. I thought that the reactions to the particular scenes in testimony were interesting to me in the sense that like i think linda was being serious this morning when she was praising these scenes, and ben macken tire who happens to be here reviewed the book for the New York Times book review, and he was not persuaded by these sex scenes. And the biggest chance youre taking when you write about sex is that it is really unique which makes everybody curious about it. But what was one person fantasy will turn somebody one person on is not going to be very interesting to somebody else. And that is the chance that you are taking. But and my editor deb futter was uncomfortable with scenes and frankly a little more explicit but there were details that, you know, she would cross it out and i would send back the next draft and i put it you know back in. Back in. And she would cross it back out, and she finally won the sex toy debate. So you know yeah, i guess i enjoy it. Why i think it is very brave and i admire it. So we have like a couple of minutes does anybody have any questions . For scott [laughter] theres one question back there. Yes, maam. Your case well, thank god you like one, elle. One was scotts first book a book i wrote about being a law student and you know, its if the bosks published in 1977 so 41 years later and its still in precinct. Print so yeah, well no, but see this is a common are you a mom . [laughter] one l was a good experience for me tfsz not the basis of the movie the paper chase which was based on a book by john jay osborne. Which of the same name the paper chase and the first review of one l was written in any hometown pairm the newspaper i grew up read aring this Chicago Sun Times and that review was written by john j. Osborne, and he hated everything about one l and he took off on my exwife, and it was that was my entree into the literary world was lying on my living room floor after reading this review and growning and you know being reviewed by the way is hard part of being a writer. Do you read reviews . There you go. Only one i read is somebody says it is a great review. Ill read it but i cant you know, one bad review makes takes away 100 good reviews for me you think about bad review and i become philosophical about them and i dont you know, often adrian will say dont read this one. Its just its just thats almost as bad. You know. No. I take the advice. It will just irritate me. But yeah, i mean what i think is that if you keep hearing the same remark again and again from review after review you can take from that the fact that you made a mistake, of course, these days, you know, the reviews written by critics stand side by side with the reviews written by readers. And in some ways those are more consequential in terms of the sales of the book or that report and factor. And terrifying to read like amazon review i say is like one star. But this book i ordered this book on such and such a date and it took 11 days and package wases ripped it is like one star. I had nothing to do. [laughter] i dont deliver the freaking book lady. You know . Anyway were out of time. Were out of o time. But give it up for scott and it shall [applause] and the final author panel from this years writers festival is a disdiscussion on political candidates and elections. With karl rogge suzanne eisenhower and tim miller for jeb bush 2016. Please welcome to the stage eisenhower [inaudible conversations] with moderator ben gordon star