849 | The Real Story Behind A River Runs Through It with John Maclean  

849 Transcript 00:00:00 John: Today, we’re tracing the story behind one of the most enduring works ever tied to fly fishing, a story that quietly reshaped the sport and touched readers far beyond the water’s edge. This conversation isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about family, memory, responsibility, and the kind of grief that doesn’t fade just because the river keeps moving. By the end of this episode, you’ll see the book not as a tale about fly fishing, but as a story of love, guilt, forgiveness, and the waters that stay with us long after we leave them. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast, where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, and what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. John MacLean grew up inside a River Runs Through It, journalist, author and son of Norman MacLean. John has spent decades following the threads behind the greatest fly fishing movie of all time, the real Paul. The truth of his death, the burden his father carried and how the loss eventually became literature. Here to share the journey and all the stories is John McClane. You can find his work at John McClane books. How’s it going, John? 00:01:06 Speaker 2: It’s going pretty well. Beautiful Indian summer weather here in Washington, D.C.. 00:01:11 John: Oh, wow. Yeah. You’re in D.C.. Yes. There you go. Okay, so this is, uh, getting off to a good start. We’ve, uh, I’ve done a little bit of fishing out on the East coast. Not as much as the west, but we’ll probably touch on that today and kind of what you’re doing. You’re, uh, you’re an author. We’re going to talk about some of the books. Probably the biggest thing here is you’re the son of Norman McLean, one of the most, I mean, not even one of the most, the most famous fly fishing book and movie of all time. A river runs through it. So we’re going to talk about that. Your connection over the years, it’s come up probably more than anything else on the podcast because people have talked, whether you’re a, you know, if you’re in the industry of, you know, a guy at a shop owner in nineteen ninety two three, a river runs through it, just like catapulted fly fishing into the next level of, you know, bringing it to the mainstream. Um, so we’re going to talk about all that today. But first, take us back. You know, you said you’re you’re in D.C.. What’s happening this time of year? Are you busy writing? 00:02:02 Speaker 2: Uh, actually, I was when you called, I forgot we were going to do the podcast, and I was, uh, working on a draft of a book, uh, that I hope to come out next year, which is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A River Runs Through It. 00:02:18 John: There you go. Yeah. So fifty years. That’s some unbelievable. And and I’m actually fifty right now, so that’s, uh. Yeah. 00:02:25 Speaker 2: It doesn’t seem like that long at all. 00:02:27 John: No, it doesn’t seem like fifty. 00:02:29 Speaker 2: Seems like it’s something that just happened, you know. 00:02:31 John: Yeah. So nineteen seventy five, the book was published seventy six seventy six. So the book was published in seventy six. And what was that like? Do you remember? Because it kind of had a slow like, it didn’t kind of blast off into the the, you know, universe until later, right? 00:02:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. Let’s be fair. You know, Robert Redford supercharged the thing with his movie, but it had a very interesting early history, uh, the University of Chicago Press, where my when my father taught at the University of Chicago, brought the book out and the first run of it, the first printing was fifteen hundred copies. Uh, they didn’t really believe in it. And g a lot of people liked it, and they grabbed it. And, uh, so they printed an additional three thousand. That first year, we tried to get an exact number for it, and it can’t, you know, who knows? Did the press keep running an hour later? About five thousand copies, four thousand five hundred, five thousand copies. But then every year after that, it sold more copies. That’s very unusual for a book. Usually you have a burst the first year or two, and then it tapers off. This had the opposite taper. Uh, it. 00:03:40 John: Keeps getting. 00:03:41 Speaker 2: Bigger up and up. Yeah, bigger and bigger. 00:03:43 John: Even to this day, is it still going up and up even today? 00:03:46 Speaker 2: Well, no it’s not. It’s, uh, it had a height after the movie came out. Yeah. And. No, it’s not a no. 00:03:54 John: It’s not down. Okay. 00:03:56 Speaker 2: I mean, it comes right along and it has years when it does go up. When, uh, my memoir came out, uh, home waters, it, uh, the sales went up sixty over sixty percent on a river runs through it. So these things don’t happen. But what happened with the earliest years is that you guys in the fishing industry got Ahold of it and said, this is the authentic thing. This is what it feels like to fish. You know, anybody can write a book about how you fish. Uh, not anybody. 00:04:24 John: Not anybody. 00:04:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, there are good ones and bad ones and exceptional ones. 00:04:29 John: Well, anybody can write a book, but not anybody can’t write a great book. Right? 00:04:33 Speaker 2: But this one told you what it feels like to fish. You know, it put the soul into the into the sport. And people loved it. 00:04:39 John: And it was a book about. It’s interesting because we’ve heard stories about your dad on the podcast. We’ve had people that were in the movie connected to it that helped produce it, things like that. And there was one famous one, I think it was Gary Borger. Um, mentioned, I believe. Right. It was Gary who was involved in it early on. He mentioned that he was in a later I think he was at a um, or sometime in early in that period. He asked your dad, like your dad asked him what he thought about the book. And Gary said, oh, it’s the greatest fly fishing book ever. And your dad was like, no, it’s not a book about fly fishing, right? So talk about that. What was your dad’s? He really what was his thoughts on what it was about? 00:05:15 Speaker 2: Uh, that anecdote happened with a lot of different people. Yeah. Uh, he would give the book to different people, and they would read it, and then he would ask them what they thought of it. And you can read it in a night. I mean, Jack Dennis, uh, tells me that exact same story. He was some kind of a conference, and my dad was there. And Jack is very personable. And so he introduced himself, and I said, here, take the book. And so Jack took it back to his hotel room. He read it overnight and next morning said, what did you think of the book? What did you think it was about? He says, oh, it’s the greatest fishing book ever written. He You said you didn’t get it. Go back and read it again. And Jack did. Took it back to his hotel and he read it again. And he came back the next morning and I said, what’s the book about? Said. Story of two brothers. He said, you got it. 00:06:03 John: Yeah. 00:06:04 Speaker 2: Just like that. So that’s really, I think, what has made the book, the book I’m writing now started out as a nice memoir about what it’s like to be a fly fisherman when you’re as old as I am. Mhm. Called fishing into the Twilight. And, uh, I wrote a piece that wound up in Field and Stream called fishing Into the Twilight, which talks about this, uh, a short piece and not expanding that into a book. But as I expanded it, I just kept running into my Uncle Paul and his murder. And so, you know, we go along fishing. I do a little fishing in Montana. I do a little fishing on the Missouri. I do some fishing at Penns Creek in Pennsylvania, which I love. I fished that for thirty years. Wonderful stream. And then we’ll wait, you know, let’s go back and figure how this thing ever got started. 00:06:59 John: How the whole. 00:07:00 Speaker 2: The whole chain of events. I mean, this whole business. I mean, I’ve written this is my eighth book. Uh, I wrote five books about fatal wildland fires. My dad wrote one young man in fire that he never finished it. We had to finish for him. And how did all this stuff start? And it all goes back to Paul’s murder in Chicago. 00:07:22 John: It does. Maybe you can describe that a little bit on the murder, because I think that’s something a lot of people don’t really. It’s part of the movie, obviously, a big part because that’s a tragic part of the book. But yeah, describe that a little bit. 00:07:34 Speaker 2: Yeah. You don’t see it. I mean, that’s one of the things I really like about that movie. People say, what do you think about the movie? And I’m as a fisherman, I’m supposed to say, oh, it isn’t the book, it’s the movie. Let’s take it on its own terms. 00:07:45 John: Yeah, it’s a movie. 00:07:46 Speaker 2: What’s wonderful about the movie for me is that everybody can go, a whole family can go see that movie, and the kids like Paul, and they identify with Paul, and he’s charming, he’s handsome and he’s troubled. And they’re kids, and they’ve got trouble. And they know something’s bad’s going to happen. You can’t get away with as much as he did. When it happens, you don’t see it. It’s off screen. There’s no blood, there’s no horror. There is the emotional aftermath somewhat, but not it’s it’s handled so deftly that you’re not cringing and saying, oh God, I just feel awful about this. 00:08:27 John: Right. You don’t want that. 00:08:29 Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, so that was good. The actual murder was nasty. 00:08:35 John: Right. So you’re in your document, you’re following this in a book that you’re writing now and talking about the murder. 00:08:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, I wrote about it in home waters because I wanted to put an end to all the speculation about it, and I didn’t. I didn’t succeed in that. I succeeded in writing a factual account. You know I am who I am. And so I was a reporter in Chicago for a lot of years. I know how to do that kind of thing. And I was at the time I did the research on it. I was Paul’s closest living relative, so I could get documents like a coroner’s report that other people couldn’t get. 00:09:06 John: Oh, wow. 00:09:07 Speaker 2: And yeah, and the coroner’s inquest and sworn testimony by my father and others, the cops, the whole thing. And I put that in the book. I thought, oh, this is going to quiet down. He went out on a Sunday night after an ordinary day, taking a girlfriend to a White Sox game and having dinner. And at ten o’clock he dropped her off. And instead of going home, he went out and got drunk and tried to start fights on the street in the South Side of Chicago, which is a bad thing to try to do. It’s rough out. 00:09:36 John: There. 00:09:37 Speaker 2: And sometime after midnight, probably he was around that time, he got into an altercation with people and they killed him, beat him to death, and he was found about five o’clock the next morning, still alive. And he died about one o’clock that afternoon. So that factual account is there in in home waters. 00:09:59 John: Yeah. And these were just some people, just some random people that were he just ran into out at a bar. 00:10:05 Speaker 2: Well, that’s the question. 00:10:06 John: That’s the question. 00:10:08 Speaker 2: That’s the question that I’m dealing with right now. 00:10:10 John: Gotcha. 00:10:11 Speaker 2: After the book came out, a couple of old friends of mine and my dad’s who by the time they called me, were in their nineties. Uh, said, hey, wait a minute, John, uh, your father told a different story about this. Hmm. Uh, to us and to others. I’ve checked it out and. Yeah. And even checked my memory. I think he said something to me, but I was so young, it didn’t register. Yeah. Uh, he thought or said that an Irish gang, uh, killed his brother. And it’s true for sure that Paul had gotten into debt or gambling with this gang in Chicago. 00:10:55 John: Not in Montana. 00:10:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, South side of Chicago. Well, let’s move Paul. Geographically in the movie, he never leaves Montana. No. Uh, and in the book, he never leaves Montana. In fact, the last year and a half or so of his life, he was in Chicago. He had gotten in debt, in trouble, uh, repeatedly in Montana and gambling debts. My father said. 00:11:17 John: Gotcha. 00:11:17 Speaker 2: He must have won some time. But they had to pay off his debts to my father, and their father had to pay off his debts. And I got sick of it. 00:11:26 John: Yeah. 00:11:26 Speaker 2: They said, look, you know, you gotta straighten out your life. Go to Chicago, your brother will watch over you and help you get a job. And the guy’s in his thirties. What? Wait a minute. You know, he’s got a good job. but he did that. He went to Chicago, lived in Hyde Park. He worked for the University of Chicago publicity department. Wow. Because my dad had, uh. Your dad got a friend who ran that? Yeah. And couldn’t get a job on a newspaper with his experience. Ten years of Montana Newspapering didn’t work. Uh, I got into the Chicago journalism in a way that he hadn’t. He had applied to the city news bureau of Chicago. Uh, and they turned him down. You had to know somebody. You had to have somebody. Somebody. You had to be somebody. Somebody sent. 00:12:12 John: Right. 00:12:13 Speaker 2: And at that time, the guy who ran the press relations bureau at the University of Chicago didn’t know enough people. He just got in the job. By the time I came along, he did, and he made a call, and I got a job. Within three days, I had a press card with the city news bureau, uh, and went on. But Paul didn’t get that, and he got in debt. And then something happened. According to my father. These guys killed him. And what the callers told me. One of them told me. He said your dad didn’t say. It might have been this way. He said they killed him. They did it. Yeah. I don’t think that’s true. Mm. Yeah, I don’t, I mean, you can’t prove it one way or another. I think that that was fiction that he told himself in order to make Paul’s murder more meaningful and connected to his life than it was, even if it was connected to something kind of seamy, like, you know, being beaten to death for a gambling debt in a back alley on the South Side of Chicago. 00:13:14 John: Right. 00:13:14 Speaker 2: And this gets us into a very interesting place, which is worth getting into with A River Runs Through it, which is what’s the difference between fact and fiction. 00:13:24 John: Right? 00:13:25 Speaker 2: And when you get to grief and guilt, there’s almost it’s a very permeable barrier between those two things. Between self-accusation. Guilt is self-accusation. And you don’t stop short. You know, you go a long way on this. And my dad got into this guilt complex about Paul, and he’d been responsible. He was in charge of. All right. 00:13:49 John: And he got because he went to Chicago. Your brother was kind of looking over to him. Over him. And then he died on his watch. 00:13:55 Speaker 2: You got it, brother. Killed on his watch. And. Yeah. And he blamed himself for it because Paul had come to him and said, I need money to pay these guys off. And he turned him down. 00:14:04 John: Oh. 00:14:05 Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. Oh, boy. So this becomes the motivation for writing A River Runs Through It. 00:14:12 John: Wow. So that’s where the motivation came from, from Paul’s death. That situation. And your dad feeling like he was the reason for it. Crazy. 00:14:19 Speaker 2: And he almost didn’t do it. 00:14:21 John: He almost didn’t do it. 00:14:22 Speaker 2: Yeah. That’s just that’s what my current book is about. And he didn’t start this writing. A River runs Through it till he was seventy years old. 00:14:30 John: Seventy years old, right? 00:14:32 Speaker 2: Wow. And he had not written a book before it. And I couldn’t tell you about writing books. It ain’t easy. 00:14:37 John: No. So what was he doing if he started A River Runs Through It, writing it at seventy. What was he doing for most of his life before. 00:14:43 Speaker 2: Teaching English at the University of Chicago and fishing summers in Montana and taking care of our cabin. 00:14:49 John: Right. And he wasn’t writing for he wasn’t writing books until later in life. 00:14:53 Speaker 2: He was trying to he tried to write a book about, uh, the Custer fight. And, uh, it didn’t work. Yeah. And, uh, I think it didn’t work. Um, an analysis of that one, too. Uh, because he took on too much. He wanted to write a book about the military history. Okay. As a subject, why don’t you write a work about the social history of it? You know, the milieu wanted to write about the afterlife of the battle and how it affected, uh, life in America. Uh, he wanted to write it about an advertising campaign. The great painting. The Budweiser painting. Uh, of the cluster on the on the hill in his final moments. Thing after thing after thing. And it was just too much and it collapsed. Uh, it went right. The history of the Cheyenne Indians, and then maybe also the history of the Sioux, because there were some of them there. Yeah, right. Whoa! Pick one and stick with it. And he didn’t do that, and he finally had to abandon it. So he hadn’t written a book. Um, that first book is hard to write. 00:15:56 John: Yeah, the first one, we’ve talked a lot. We’ve had a number of authors, including John Gierach and a number of great authors, and we’ve talked about Hemingway and, you know, and I’ve read some great books, and one of them is, um, you know, called The War of Art, Steven Pressfield. And if you haven’t seen that one, this was a powerful book, because what he says is it’s he’s a writer and he was a he didn’t make it big. He was very kind of like your dad. Well, at least writing didn’t make it big. And then finally he wrote a book called The Legend of Bagger Vance. And that book became a movie as well, and he became famous. But what he says in the ah of the War of art, he says, you got to be like a marine. Writing or doing anything great is like, it’s so hard that you got to be able to, like, show up every day. You know, you got to be able to live in your car. You got to build like, which he did. You know, you got to be able to take the pain because it’s going to be hard. You’re going to continually getting you’re going to fail. And so he and a lot of people use that book because it just reminds you like, man, this is not easy a business. You know, having a writing a book, it’s all to be successful at it. So you got to keep going even when you’re failing a lot. Right? So I feel like that, um, you know, your dad probably felt some of that. 00:17:00 Speaker 2: Uh, I think he felt it acutely. Yeah, uh, that he hadn’t done it, and he he always wanted to be a writer. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to be an author. And, uh, he tried and tried and failed. And here he was. His wife had died. He was alone. He thought, you know, but that also gives you a great deal of freedom. And he hadn’t reconciled with his brother. He was still eating him alive. There’s a wonderful book out, uh, by a couple of academic people about, uh, how a River Runs Through. It was written and they spent years going over all the time. It’s academic. I’ll give you the name, but it’s one hundred and thirty three dollars retail. That’s okay. 00:17:45 John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to it. 00:17:46 Speaker 2: Here’s the story. It begins with the opening sentence of this book that has looked at everything that he ever did about or around. Norman McLean was tortured by writing. Yeah. Which is what you just said. I mean, this is a torture. This is not. It’s not a pleasant walk in the park. 00:18:03 John: No, I mean, and you could probably put that to anything. Great. You know, there’s going to be you know, there’s going to be that work to get there. You’ve got to keep working your whole life sometimes. Right. The journey. So he wrote this book at was it published when he was seventy? Did it in seventy seventy three. 00:18:17 Speaker 2: When he was seventy three? When it was published in seventy six. 00:18:20 John: Did he see the, um, some success of the book or when did the movie come out? Versus was he still around? 00:18:27 Speaker 2: He was not the movie. And his second book, Young Men and Fire, both came out after he was gone. Yeah. Uh, but what he saw was the, uh, approbation, the acceptance and the praise that came from the fishing community. 00:18:45 John: Oh, he did see it. So before the movie? 00:18:46 Speaker 2: Yes. He did. He just loved that the book. 00:18:49 John: People were reading the book well before Redford put the movie out. 00:18:53 Speaker 2: This is long before the movie. Yeah. You know that the fishing guys got on to it and they supported it, and they said, this is it. This is the real McCoy. And I can’t tell you how happy that made him. I mean, he was just joyful about that. The literary people got on to it, too. And that mattered because he was a literary guy and he talked to it, was a great teacher of English literature. So that was a big deal. So. No, he was not, uh, he was not unhappy. Studs Terkel I asked him once in an interview. He said, you know, don’t you wish you’d gotten into this sooner? And don’t you feel, you know, unhappy because it didn’t happen when you were forty years old? He said, whoa, whoa, whoa. He said, I’m the happiest author that ever was. 00:19:36 John: Yeah. 00:19:37 Speaker 2: You have to understand that it wasn’t just a book. This was his relationship with his brother and his father and his mother, but most importantly, with his brother. He redeemed his brother. He resurrected him from that stinking back alley on the south side of Chicago. And he made him beautiful. 00:19:56 John: Yeah. 00:19:56 Speaker 2: And he gave him an afterlife. And he has had a remarkable afterlife. It has gone on and on and on. And I get this. Yeah. Because people are touched by the book. Various things. They love the fishing. The one thing or another. The brother thing gets a lot of people. Oh, yeah, there are a lot of people who have had the same experience with siblings. Doesn’t matter if it’s a brother or sister. Gender makes no difference in this. But they had some sib who went astray. They tried to help and it didn’t work. They offered the absolute best of themselves and it was refused. And it came to a very bad end. And forever they felt alone. Then suddenly they read, A river runs through It, and there it is. 00:20:45 John: Check out Jackson Hole Fly Company today. Premium fly gear straight to your door without the premium price. Jackson Hole Fly Company designs and builds their own fly rods, reels, flies and gear. Delivering quality you can trust at prices that let you fish more and spend less. Whether you’re picking up a fly rod for the first time or guiding every day, they’ve got what you need. Check them out right now. That’s Jackson hole fly company, Jackson hole fly company. Com. When it comes to high quality flies that truly elevate your fly fishing game, drift hook is the trusted source you need. I’ve been using drift hooks, expertly selected flies for a while now, and they never disappoint. Plus, they stand behind their products with a money back guarantee. Are you ready to upgrade your fly box? Head over to Drift Hook today and use the code at checkout to get fifteen percent off your first order. That’s drift hook. Don’t miss out. Well, and that’s what resonated for me directly, is that I have actually three brothers, older brothers. And I had one that went through a period of we all thought he was going to die because he wasn’t taking care of himself. You know, alcohol, you know, like all sorts of stuff. And at a certain point I told him I was trying to help, and I was like, you know, there’s nothing I can do. You know, if they’re not going to listen to you. Right. I mean, you feel like you’re kind of helpless and you kind of give up. I feel like maybe your dad did that a little bit, right? He felt like there was nothing he could do to save Paul with what he was doing at the time. 00:22:14 Speaker 2: Well, I think it was worse than that. I think he thought that there was something he could have done that would have saved him. And he didn’t do it. Yeah, at the end, having tried everything else but your story, Dave, I mean, this is it. 00:22:27 John: It’s not abnormal. 00:22:28 Speaker 2: No. You belong to a large company. 00:22:31 John: Yep. And my brother didn’t die. You know, luckily, he’s getting better and, you know, getting help. But it’s still one of those things. I could see it, right? I felt what that was like to potentially lose somebody. What’s your, um. Do you remember your grandfather? 00:22:44 Speaker 2: Uh, no. He died before I was born. But I have studied him. Yeah, we have the same name. Uh, John Norman McLean. Uh, I like a lot of what he did. I live in part of the year in the cabin that he built. 00:22:58 John: Oh, wow. So you lived part of the year in the cabin? That kind of was set with. The movie was basically set on that area. 00:23:03 Speaker 2: That same area that was the. They never went to the cabin and they never used a cabin. They used the house in Missoula. That’s what they recreated. Yeah. And, uh, at the time, we were all feeling kind of touchy about it, and I’m glad they didn’t. 00:23:15 John: Oh, they were thinking about using that actual cabin. 00:23:18 Speaker 2: No they weren’t. 00:23:19 John: No, no. 00:23:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. Happened is they didn’t use the Blackfoot. 00:23:22 John: Oh that’s right. 00:23:23 Speaker 2: You know, all the fishing scenes are elsewhere, and you get various stories about why that happened. Yeah. The background for the Blackfoot River shows hills that, uh, still have logging scars. Uh, well, what do you think it looked like in the nineteen twenties? 00:23:40 John: Oh, it. 00:23:41 Speaker 2: Was probably worse when it was done. It looked worse. Yeah. They were. They hadn’t come back green. No. You see these patches of green? It looks like a snake. Green stamps in various shades of green on the on the hillsides. But they also discovered that if they had gone up to Missoula to do this in the Blackfoot, uh, scenes or sixty miles away, fifty or sixty miles away, that it would have cost them about, uh, one hundred thousand dollars a day extra for support services. And in Livingston, Montana, it’s pretty remote headquartered. Uh, they were up for it. I mean, they they’ve done this, they’ve got the services and and it all worked. That had something to do with it. Uh, my father said that when that movie is made, it’s going to be on a Blackfoot River or it’s not going to be made right. But he died before it was made. Yeah, there’s a story about that one, too. Can I tell that story? That’s a fun. 00:24:34 John: one. Oh, yeah. No. Feel free. I want to hear. I want to hear all the stories. This is great. 00:24:37 Speaker 2: Well, the, uh, Redford talked him into it. He had an option, uh, with, uh. Oh. 00:24:45 John: So. So. Redford. So before the movie goes live in ninety two, ninety three, was it ninety two or ninety three in that period? Right. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: Uh, the movie wasn’t until the nineties. 00:24:54 John: Yeah, until the nineties. So ninety three. But Robert Redford was talking to your dad before he passed away, right? Uh, but. 00:24:59 Speaker 2: He was talking to him, and, yes, in, in the eighties, at the end of the eighties, in the nineteen eighties, when my dad was in his eighties. Yeah. Redford got in touch with him and said, I want to come by and talk to you. And he said, that’s fine, come on by and talk to me. So they set a date for it, and Richard flew out to Chicago and he missed it by a day. He was a day late. 00:25:20 John: Oh, your dad was a late, late for a meeting. 00:25:23 Speaker 2: Redford was a day late. 00:25:25 John: Oh, Redford was a day late for. 00:25:26 Speaker 2: The. 00:25:26 John: Meeting. 00:25:26 Speaker 2: He knocked on the door. Um, my father opened the door and said, Robert, you’re late. And closed the door. 00:25:33 John: Oh, wow. He closed the door on Robert Redford. 00:25:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. This is my old man. Um, and, you know, people got panicky about that and fluttered around and got it straightened out. Then they sent my dad a script, and the script opened with Paul on a dock at Seeley Lake for cabinet. And he’s got a big rainbow trout that he’s just caught. And he takes the trout and he kills it by breaking its neck. 00:26:03 John: Right. 00:26:03 Speaker 2: And you had to scrape my father off the ceiling. I mean, that was his brother and. No. 00:26:09 John: No no. Not good. Not a good. 00:26:10 Speaker 2: Start. And Redford just stopped trying to make the movie at that point. 00:26:14 John: Oh, wow. 00:26:15 Speaker 2: Bob died earlier this year and we lost him. Uh, he was, you know, he could be a Hollywood movie star. Handsome movie star. He could also be a very decent, smart human being. And I think he was a really good actor. And I admire him for one thing in particular, that he kept on being an actor when he was old. You know, a lot of those pretty boys just quit when they stopped being pretty. 00:26:37 John: Oh, yeah. I mean, Robert Redford is like when you think of actors, he’s like at the top of, you know, the movie’s the stuff he’s been in, right? The Sundance Kid, um, you name it. I can’t even think of him. All right. 00:26:48 Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that movie. Yeah, yeah, but he did the old guy movies, too, and he did a lot of directing, and he did a lot of, uh, helping other people. Did everything. Sundance Festival. 00:26:58 John: Sundance Film Festival. Right. 00:27:00 Speaker 2: He’s a big conservationist. 00:27:01 John: And he’s a conservationist, which is huge. 00:27:03 Speaker 2: Yes. You know, he was like you and me. I mean, he really cared about pterosaurs. 00:27:07 John: Resource. Yeah, he was a guy. I never had him on the podcast. He was a person I always wanted. I thought, you know, Robert Redford. Of course, we still have Brad Pitt, so maybe we’ll get him on. But, you know, we’ve had a couple of well, probably one of the most famous conservationist, Brad Pitt. No, not yet, but we got it. We got a goal. But I had I had Yvon Chouinard on who’s probably one of the biggest conservationists. You know, you got his coat on Patagonia founder and, and he talked on that podcast just like this. We we talked all about conservation. It was an hour of conservation, how he was trying to save the home planet. But I didn’t realize that. Yeah, Robert Redford was also a conservationist. 00:27:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed. And had people around him who were, uh, you talk about my grandfather, the guy who played my grandfather, Tom Skerritt. Skerritt and I think did an absolutely amazing job. She’s, uh, is a huge conservationist. He and I met because we’re both, uh, do occasional work for American rivers. 00:28:00 John: Oh, yeah. 00:28:00 Speaker 2: Uh, yeah. And when I was doing the book, doing some research for the book earlier this year. I got in touch with Tom because I said, I’ve got some quotes of yours that I’ve dug out, uh, where you talk about your role playing my grandfather and you say, is your favorite role of all the ones you played. Would you mind if I use these? He wrote back, and which apparently doesn’t happen very often. Yeah. And he said yes. Of all the roles I have ever played, uh, that was the best. 00:28:31 John: No kidding. That was his best role of all time. 00:28:33 Speaker 2: And it turns out that his dad was like my grandfather, who was Canadian. He was a laconic, tough guy. And he had the same habit that my grandfather and my father had. You know, we’d sit down together, be talking, and he would just pat you on the knee like that. Yeah. Kind of a, you know, didn’t do well trying to express affection with words. Oh, right. Just like, you know, you know. 00:28:59 John: You’re doing okay. 00:29:01 Speaker 2: You’re doing okay. We’re connected. 00:29:03 John: Right? So your dad did that and your grandpa did that? 00:29:06 Speaker 2: Yep. Both of them? Yeah. I’m sure my grandfather did. As I say. I wasn’t around for it, but it was a habit my father had. And I’m sure that he picked it up from his father. 00:29:15 John: Wow. What? You said. It sounds like you’ve done some research on your grandfather. What? What have you learned on that? That maybe wasn’t shown in the movie? 00:29:22 Speaker 2: Well, uh. His life had two parts that before and after Paul. I mean, he was through. Oh, really? After Paul was killed? Yeah. I mean, I don’t think they handled Paul well. I think they, you know, jumped on him and, uh, kind of half smothered him, and he didn’t handle it well. I mean, he really should have fought a lot harder for an independent life. By the time he got told he had to go to Chicago, which is the opposite of Montana. He was in his thirties. Yeah. I mean, come on, you got some independence here. He. He had ten years on a newspaper. He had a great job. He’s a political reporter in Helena, and everybody knew him and were respected him. Yeah. Hadn’t married, hadn’t really ever had a serious love affair with a woman. Uh, his best friend was my mother, who understood him more than anybody else did. Uh, they were both kind of freer spirits, and he it just it was bad. And my grandfather was a pillar of a pioneer community and brought civility and learning out to the western frontier. 00:30:34 John: Right. He was a Presbyterian minister. 00:30:37 Speaker 2: He was a Presbyterian minister. And he was a pastor in Bozeman, uh, initially, uh, where he instigated the building of a new church, which is still there. And then did the same thing in Missoula, uh, with his great friend AJ Gibson, who was the fabulous architect, uh, there in Missoula and a great family friend, and I think one of the most, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read of his, of my grandfather’s was the eulogy he gave for A.J. Gibson and his wife when they were killed in an accident. Um, in the winter, it was, you know, a misty day. Uh, you couldn’t see anything. And they got stuck on a railroad crossing in Missoula, and the train plowed into him and killed him. Uh, but it’s a lovely thing, and I quote it in its entirety, virtually in home waters. 00:31:26 John: Oh, you do in home waters. Okay. 00:31:28 Speaker 2: Yeah. So I’ve gone back and I’ve, you know, tried to find out what he said, what he did, uh, the effect that he had on the community, he was thought of, uh, a, you know, kind of a prince of the church. That’s exactly what they called him. 00:31:44 John: And what year was this when they moved to Missoula? 00:31:47 Speaker 2: Oh. 00:31:49 John: Um, roughly. 00:31:50 Speaker 2: I should be able to just rattle that off. But in the twenties? 00:31:53 John: Yeah, in the twenties. 00:31:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s when I came in there. And he stayed there for twenty five years. The Reverend. He became the general secretary of the Presbyterian Synod, which is like being a bishop in a Catholic church. And so he had to go over to Helena to do that. And he lived in Helena for a while, and actually Paul lived with him and paid rent. Uh, you know, it’s not good. 00:32:20 John: No, no. Yeah. Paul never. Really. He never really. Um. How would you say that? Is he. He kind of. He I don’t know. He didn’t find his way. It seems like he was kind of stuck. 00:32:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, he fell out of the nest. He didn’t fly out of the nest. 00:32:34 John: Yeah, he fell out, right? Yeah. Even though he had. It seemed like he had a lot. Well, at least the movie portrays in the book, right? Well, maybe not the book as much. I’m thinking the movie, but as this, you know, um, a lot of potential. 00:32:45 Speaker 2: Oh, he did. He had a lot of talent, and people really liked him. He had a lot of charm. 00:32:49 John: Yeah, and personable and all that stuff. 00:32:51 Speaker 2: And he was extraordinarily handsome. Yeah. I mean, there are stories about when he was at the University of Chicago doing this job for the PR department that the women typists would time his travel across the quadrangle so that they could go out and be on the quadrangle when Paul McClain walked by. 00:33:09 John: Wow. 00:33:10 Speaker 2: Uh, crazy. Yeah. Uh, and guys liked him. He was a fine athlete. Uh, a good handball player and a sportsman and had great charm, but just blew it. 00:33:24 John: He. Well, he had a, like, a lot of us, right? We have certain vices. And gambling was probably his worst. And maybe alcohol too. Or. No. Those two. Yeah. Yeah. Both. Yeah. That is, you know, again, back to the family stuff for me. I mean, to gambling and alcohol. I’ve known my whole life because my dad has struggled with alcohol his whole life. Um. I’ve gambling. I had a grandfather who was a big addict, had issues. So my whole life I’ve known, like, okay, I got to be careful with these two things I don’t want to. And so I never really got into gambling. And alcohol has always been one of those things where I’ve known like, okay, it’s tough, right? Because these things are you kind of get in the middle of it and all the sudden you turn around, you’re addicted. 00:34:04 Speaker 2: That’s right. And I’ve got you. You haven’t got them. 00:34:07 John: Yeah. How have you have you had any, uh, you know, struggles, uh, with your life, you know, similar vices, anything like that or. It seems like. 00:34:15 Speaker 2: A lot of links to Paul and some of them are. The less said, the better. 00:34:19 John: Yeah. Yeah. Right. You do? Yeah. 00:34:22 Speaker 2: But I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. Uh, I’ve been married to the same woman for almost sixty years. Uh, I have two sons who are both successful. Uh, I’ve written eight books. I spent thirty years in the newspaper business. I was, uh, diplomatic correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in Washington. Uh, I wound up being the foreign editor for a while. I quit after thirty years. I’ve been writing books for thirty years. Wow. So. Yes. 00:34:46 John: Yeah, that’s a full career right there. Just writing books. So it sounds like you took more after your father, who kind of had a successful career. Right. Tell me about the book for you working on the books. What’s that work been like? 00:34:57 Speaker 2: Uh, it started out, as I say, it was kind of a idle occupation. One of the things I wanted to do when I quit the Tribune thirty years ago was to kind of fill in books by writing outdoor stuff for the hook and bullet press. You know, when I was a kid, we had Sports Afield, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, and I think Sports Afield was still around. I wrote a couple of pieces for them, uh, sporty pieces. And then they all died, you know, or became something different. 00:35:25 John: Yeah. The magazine, the whole media has changed. 00:35:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, there wasn’t any market for it, so I stopped. Then when, uh, I’d finished, uh, Home Waters and I was looking at our next project, I thought, well, I’m going to go back to do that. Maybe Field and Stream has come back. It’s come back very differently. It comes out twice a year and said, you know, it’d be really cool to write for Field and Stream because I grew up reading that. The Bob Roark, the old Man and the boy stories, all the great stuff they had. So I called the editor, who had done a really nice job, uh, with a profile, uh, of me and Home Waters. Very nice piece. Uh, Colin Kearns is the editor, and I said, Colin, I’d like to write a story for you. He said, oh, that’d be great. Go ahead and do it. So I did. And, uh, I turned it in and there was silence for a week. And so I called him up. I said, hey, Colin, did you get that story I sent you? He said, yeah, I got it. I said, well, what’d you think of it? He said, uh, I didn’t like it. Mm. I said, oh, what didn’t you like about it? He said, well, it’s a fishing story. 00:36:38 John: Yeah. 00:36:38 Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, right. Field and stream. And I said, well, what were you looking for, Colin? He said, well, I was looking for something more meditative. 00:36:47 John: Mhm. 00:36:48 Speaker 2: Uh, you know, that’s interesting. I said, I’ll tell you what, why don’t I take that thing back, uh, for a few weeks and see what I can do? He said, why don’t you do that? So I did, and he had done me a great favor. Uh, I really owe him a big one, because I went back and I spent a few days in recovery, and then, um, I started writing it and got very meditative. And I loved writing it. It was, you know, I’m old enough. So the thrill of writing about catching a fish doesn’t exist. You’ve got to have something more going on here. Yeah. And here was, you know, something more really interesting. So I wrote this piece. It wasn’t very long, twelve hundred words or so, and turned it in. And he said, we love it. We wish it was longer. I said, oh, well, better. So they got a guy to do some paintings, illustrations for it, and I looked one of them in particular, I just love And, uh, I wound up taking those paintings and the wood engravings from River runs Through It, Home waters. And the book I did of, uh, uh, a River run of Big Two-hearted River, the Centennial edition, and getting an art exhibit going from that. So suddenly things are expanding, you know, instead of, uh, just being punk, punk or hook and bullet press. Right. And that was the start of the book. And as I say, once I got into it and kept writing, it got bigger than that. It got back to this origin story. How did this all get started? How the hell did this all get started? Because it’s really been remarkable, and I’ve been able to kind of hook into it and go along with it. 00:38:38 John: You mean the whole the whole. 00:38:39 Speaker 3: The whole. 00:38:40 Speaker 2: Thing in the fire world, young men on Fire is the Bible of the Mann Gulch fire and of the Wildland Fire Service. My books are similarly thought of not. They’re different. Yeah. You know, if you know them. I’m a journalist. My dad was a half poet, and I favored that difference. You know, I did what I did, but those books all together, uh, six of them have changed the way fire investigations are made. They have made the fire ground safer. They have saved lives. I am told this regularly by people in the fire industry, and I believe it. And I certainly hope it’s true. That’s a big deal. And in the fishing world, as you said, River runs Through it ignited this breakout of fly fishing internationally. People in Japan took up fly fishing, and then they came to the Missouri River. And you. 00:39:36 John: Write. 00:39:37 Speaker 2: They dressed the way you dress in the movies? Yeah. You see them out there living the dream. So where did all that come from? I mean, how did that all get started? Because it’s something that hasn’t happened, my dad said. At one point he said, how many books do you know? How many great things were done by people in their seventies and 80s? It doesn’t happen. It happened. It happened. 00:40:02 John: Yeah. He wrote. And what is it? I mean, it’s obviously the greatest fly fishing movie, but the book is also, I mean, obviously a great book. How do people, when they talk about the book, how do they describe it and the impact to literature. 00:40:15 Speaker 2: In very personal terms? 00:40:17 John: Yeah. 00:40:17 Speaker 2: When people come up to me at presentations and things, they will often quote, especially from the last page. Um, that’s not not just the last page. 00:40:26 John: And is that the I am haunted by waters is that that’s the last line of the movie, right? 00:40:30 Speaker 2: It’s the last line of the book. 00:40:32 John: Do you know what he was, what he meant there? 00:40:35 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:40:36 John: Is that something where you knew he told you or you just. It’s obvious. 00:40:40 Speaker 2: No. I mean, he was haunted by his brother’s death. 00:40:44 John: That’s what. 00:40:45 Speaker 2: It is. The core of it. 00:40:46 John: Yeah. 00:40:47 Speaker 2: Uh, and he had this remarkable, uh, upbringing in Montana when it was Eden. You know, I go out there now, the rivers are low, the insects aren’t there anymore. The last two years have been lousy fishing. 00:41:00 John: Yeah, there’s a lot more people. Right. Bows, bows, Angelus and stuff like Bozeman isn’t the same little town it used to be. 00:41:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, we don’t have to go into that. We both know what it is. Everybody’s been out there and knows what it is. Yeah, but what he was talking about was the his whole spiritual life. Uh, which is connected to his family. I mean, it’s all in the book. I mean, it’s not. I don’t think it’s a mystery. I think it’s all there. 00:41:26 John: Fist Fly Guide service is passionate about sharing Jackson Hole’s world class fishing, from its iconic rivers to hidden backcountry waters. The legendary mutant Stone and other fantastic hatches bring explosive top water eats during peak season. Backcountry creeks hold hidden gems where every band offers something new, and wild trout rise in untouched waters. Jackson Hole sits in the Golden Circle for trout, home to the headwaters of three major river systems the snake, the green, and the Yellowstone. Here you can chase native cutthroat trout, big browns, wild rainbows, and even kokanee on the fly. If this is your kind of fishing fish, the Fly Guide service is ready to take you there. Book your trip right now at fish Thefly.com. Was that a big part for you? The your dad or your grandfather, the Presbyterian minister? Did you have did some of that trickle down? Was your dad into? Did he stay involved in kind of religious activities and kind of all that? 00:42:21 Speaker 2: Oh, yes. But not formal ones. I mean, um, we had, uh, family friend, uh, Episcopal priest and Episcopalian and, uh, who knew my father very well and knew that he was not a formal, uh, traditional Christian. And who said that he thought that a River runs through? It was the most Christian text he had ever read outside the Gospels. 00:42:49 John: Wow. That’s something that a lot of people probably don’t think about. 00:42:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, you can leave the church, but the church doesn’t leave you. 00:42:55 John: Yeah. And fishing. You mentioned meditation, but just fly fishing. We talk about that a lot, too. It’s meditative, but it is kind of a church for a lot of people. You know, if you don’t have religion, fly fishing can. You know, you can make that connection to nature, right? The environment that that’s kind of a church, a religion in its own way. 00:43:12 Speaker 2: Yes. And, uh, you know, if you want to get really interest yourself in it about the water and the whole image of the water and the logos of water. Uh, there it is. I mean, it’s in the book. Yeah, it’s all through a river runs through it. Uh, it’s steeped in Christian spirituality without ever being been explicit? 00:43:35 John: Right. Which is amazing. Which is exactly what great writers do. You know, Hemingway, right? Was probably one of the greatest that I think. I can’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but he didn’t tell you the whole story. You know, he let you as a as you were reading it, figure things out. You know, it’s part of the is that something that resonates with you, that why your dad wrote and others. 00:43:52 Speaker 3: Well. 00:43:53 Speaker 2: Both my dad and I were very influenced by Hemingway and, uh, in my case, particularly by Big Two-hearted River. Um, I read it when I was young and said, My God, you know, you can do in words what we do. In fact, this is what it feels like to fish. I know now what I want to do with my life. I want to write. I want to do this when I’ve done it so. 00:44:13 John: Right. So Hemingway was one of your biggest inspirations? 00:44:16 Speaker 2: My dad gave me the story. He said, here. Read this. 00:44:20 John: Oh, wow. 00:44:21 Speaker 2: Read this one. That’s it. And I. And it hit. And it hit with him, too. You know, for one thing, in his day, you know, in the twenties and thirties and before I came along, Hemingway stripped the junk out of writing. Yeah. You know, he made it clean and, uh, non-victorian and non-romantic while still being pretty romantic, right? Uh, but that was all pushed into simple words. Straightforward sentences. The flowery stuff was gone, and that was great. Uh, my Uncle Paul, uh, really liked Hemingway. I’ve got his copies of Hemingway novels with his name written on them, which is nice to have. Um. Wow. So that’s going to, uh, a very big deal. 00:45:08 John: Yeah. What about on the movie? Uh, again, go back to the movie versus the book. What did the movie get right? What did it get wrong? Do you think? 00:45:16 Speaker 3: Oh. 00:45:17 John: Well. Or did it get most right, or was it more like you said, the movie? You know, your freedom to have. You know, it’s not an exact replica. 00:45:23 Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean. 00:45:24 Speaker 2: Let’s use different terms, because a movie is a movie, and a book is a book. Yeah. Uh, let me tell you one place where they got everything right. Yeah, which is the end of it. Mhm. Um, I just put that up on Facebook. So last whatever it is a minute. 20s. 00:45:39 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:45:40 John: Yeah. He’s sitting there. He’s tying on the fly. His hands are. 00:45:42 Speaker 3: Shaking on the. 00:45:43 Speaker 2: Fly. And then he’s. You see him in silhouette. He’s an old man. Yeah. And the final words of the book are read. And Redford decided to do that. And I needed somebody to do the reading. So he made a recording. He said, look, this is the way I want it done. So they went out and they tried all kinds of people and they would come back with auditions. And he said, no, no, he hasn’t got it. And finally they said to him, Bob, you got it. 00:46:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:46:11 Speaker 2: You got it in the audition tape. You did it. Why don’t we use that? And that is Redford at the end reading the final words. And he got it. 00:46:21 John: He did. 00:46:22 Speaker 2: He really he he understood the whole thing. He got the pacing right. He got the feeling right. It’s just perfect. So when I’m not going to criticize the movie. 00:46:32 Speaker 3: No. 00:46:33 Speaker 2: I say they got anything wrong? 00:46:36 John: No. 00:46:36 Speaker 2: They got so much right. 00:46:39 Speaker 3: That’s good. 00:46:39 Speaker 2: And movies don’t generally do that. 00:46:42 Speaker 3: No, no. 00:46:43 Speaker 2: Uh, and so I put this thing up on Facebook and people said, oh, yeah, love that forever. And listen to it all the time. It’s got a lot of hits and likes and loves and all that kind of stuff. Make people happy, make people feel good. 00:46:57 John: It’s I mean, again, I’ve watched the movie, I don’t know how many times and read the book and, you know, all that stuff. It’s just it’s, uh, you can’t there’s nothing, you know, you could probably read it, watch the movie a hundred times more and still enjoy it. It’s one of those. It’s one of those things. Talk about the other. He had a piece and we had a listener who was had a question for you on this. And actually, this is, uh, Mark Bale, who is the, um, who was involved in, uh, you know, Rio Redington. He was kind of their part of the company for thirty years. So Mark was on the podcast recently. I asked him about this because I mentioned that you were coming on, and I said, what would you have for a question for Johnny, because he said he loved the movie and the book and everything, and he said there was a quote that your dad wrote about, and this wasn’t a River Runs Through It. I think it was in one of the other pieces that was in that that. But he said, the lumberjack. He said, your dad said he wrote that lumberjack son of a bitch named Jim. And I don’t know if you remember that part. He had. And what Mark wanted to know was, did your dad ever meet Jim, that lumberjack? Was he actually a real person? Do you know the story I’m talking about? This is from one of his other, right? 00:47:55 Speaker 2: I’m not going to try to answer that because I. It doesn’t hit. 00:47:59 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:47:59 Speaker 2: Was Jim on the other end of the saw? 00:48:04 John: Yes, I think that’s. 00:48:05 Speaker 3: What that’s what. It’s true. 00:48:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. Let me you go ahead and talk for a second. 00:48:09 Speaker 3: Let me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:48:10 John: That was in um, and we can describe this because the river runs through it is one story really of talk. 00:48:15 Speaker 3: About that a little bit. Yeah. 00:48:17 Speaker 2: There are three stories. 00:48:18 Speaker 3: And so. 00:48:19 John: three stories and River Runs through. It is just one of the stories. And there’s a couple other ones. 00:48:23 Speaker 3: Logging. 00:48:24 Speaker 2: And pimping. And your pal Jim. Did he actually know the Jim that he writes about in that story? The answer is yes he did. 00:48:33 Speaker 3: Oh, he did for real? 00:48:34 Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, actually, I’ve got a signed story in my book that I’m writing right now where my dad and I were a team. And I don’t mention Jim by name, but I talk about the experience that he had with him. Yeah. Where Jim just sort his guts out. You know, he was trying. He did keep up with him. 00:48:51 John: And this is what the big giant two. 00:48:53 Speaker 3: Person. 00:48:54 Speaker 2: Misery whip, five to seven foot long, uh, two man saw. 00:48:58 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:48:58 John: Those giant, were they two hands? 00:49:00 Speaker 2: They called a two person saw. Yeah, but, uh, let’s not get into that. Let’s call it what it really was called at the time, which was a two man saw. And it’s very simple sounding. You pull and then your partner pulls. It’s very hard to do just right, because if you get it just a little bit off this seven, Six to seven foot long saw is going to do this and bind. And your partner, if he’s really good, is going to give you hell. 00:49:32 Speaker 3: Right. 00:49:33 Speaker 2: Tell you to straighten up. And that’s what happened with my, uh, with Jim. And eventually they became a saw team to a point where Jim in the story and in fact, uh, invited them to be his saw partner the next year, being the saw partners. It’s really something when it works. My dad and I got in the same thing at the cabin one time, with one of the stars that had been used to make the cabin, and a great big tree went down. Big, uh, larch went down near our cabin. So we started signing up for firewood. And I’ll tell you, when we started out, it didn’t work. And he had done this for real with Jim, and I hadn’t. And I was just a kid and I was screwing everything up. And then eventually we got it. So it worked. And it was amazing. The intimate It’s non-verbal communication. 00:50:23 Speaker 3: No. 00:50:23 Speaker 2: And it’s perfect. Perfect communication. 00:50:25 John: Almost like the metronome. You’re in a in a two step or a four step harmony. 00:50:29 Speaker 3: Pull it back and there’s this. 00:50:30 Speaker 2: Sawdust comes spurting out your side, and then you let it go right through. You have to kind of, uh, shepherd it through while it’s going. Your partner’s pulling it, and the sawdust is spurting out on his end, and it just gets, um. And then the saw starts to sing, it gets heated up by this, and then it goes boom! 00:50:54 Speaker 3: Like that. Wow. 00:50:55 Speaker 2: And you’re in this very different world. Um, crazy and became was really wonderful. It was one of the best times we ever had together. 00:51:03 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:51:04 John: And so this story. And what was the name of this story? Talk about that a little bit. 00:51:08 Speaker 3: The story. 00:51:09 John: Couple stories there. 00:51:10 Speaker 2: My story or dad’s story? 00:51:11 John: No, the story in the book. In the book. 00:51:13 Speaker 2: In the book. My dad’s book. 00:51:15 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:51:16 Speaker 2: Right. Well, logging, pimping. And your pal Jim, It’s about the encounter he had with with Jim, this, uh, backwoods Sawyer who was really strong and good at what he did. Yeah. And, uh, how he started out basically being the me that I described with my dad. He was the incompetent young. 00:51:37 John: He was. 00:51:38 Speaker 3: Incompetent. 00:51:38 Speaker 2: Uh, you know how people are who are really good working with their hands when they get a college kid foisted on them for summer work? 00:51:48 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:51:49 Speaker 2: And the kid comes in and he can’t do anything except the guy who’s really good with his hands knows the kid is going to leave and go off and make a lot of money and have a wonderful life that this guy can’t have. And it really burns them. And that’s kind of where Jim and my father started. That is not where they ended. They ended up in this kind of wonderfully mutually respectful, uh, relationship where Jim’s in the end of it, uh, talks about, uh, having an encounter with a woman of the night and, uh, with my dad, I know, which wouldn’t, uh, rival Shakespeare, but basically saying I screwed a three hundred pound men. 00:52:34 Speaker 3: Uh, right. Wow. 00:52:37 Speaker 2: And that’s friendship. That’s respect. Yeah, and that’s what they got out of it. That’s what the story is about. That’s a real good story. 00:52:42 John: Yeah, that sounds amazing. And then was there another story in the, you know, in the book there. Talk about that. And the River runs through it in that series. Wasn’t there another story there? 00:52:51 Speaker 2: Yes. There was a third story in it, which is the ranger, the cook, and a hole in the sky that actually made that into a movie, too. 00:52:59 Speaker 3: Oh, really? 00:53:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. And it’s I think you still got it. I’ve got copies of it. 00:53:04 Speaker 3: Oh, wow. 00:53:05 Speaker 2: It is about a early day, actual Ranger, Bill Bell, who was a legend in his time as a packer and a ranger, and my dad was on his crew for a couple of summers and went through again, the same kind of, um, having to earn his his way there and did and had adventures, uh, with fire and with storms and rattlesnakes and, uh, a nice girl at the end. Um, it happened in the Bitterroot Mountains, in really wild country that still today is really wild country. 00:53:51 Speaker 3: The bitterroots. 00:53:51 Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, it’s rough there. And again, it’s this kind of coming of age story, uh, and a good one with a, a hero who is gifted in a way that we normally don’t give much respect to. And the book gives the story, respects him. Bill Bell was a great man in his way. Uh, legendary early day ranger at a time when that was the best thing you could be out there. 00:54:24 Speaker 3: Right? 00:54:24 Speaker 2: Again, it’s it’s not. You know, he’s not running, uh, a hedge fund or he’s not, uh, fiddling, uh, AI or anything like that, but he. 00:54:36 Speaker 3: Could do. 00:54:37 Speaker 2: Things. He could do real things. And my dad loved that. And then he wound up teaching English literature for decades and decades. 00:54:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, he loved it. 00:54:50 Speaker 2: Which is not the same. He loved doing that. He loved the. He loved the students. But he realized that, you know, he had a part of him that he had left and had lost. It wasn’t just Paul. It was this whole early day life on the land. 00:55:11 John: The western. Yeah, the western being out in Montana in the west. 00:55:14 Speaker 3: But we. 00:55:15 Speaker 2: Got to go to Montana every. 00:55:16 Speaker 3: Summer. We got. Yeah. You still did it. 00:55:18 John: Well, that’s an interesting one because I go back to, you know, I’ve been doing a little research and, you know, some of our founding, one of our founding fathers, but some important people in US presidents, stuff like that. But Teddy Roosevelt obviously was a huge one because he was and he told that same story. You know, he came from a wealthy family, was a great president, did a lot of great things. Um, but he when he went out West for that period and just became kind of the same thing, a Ranger, almost. Right. He was out there living off the land. It made an impact on him that he, you know, we have the national parks, you know, partly, you know, a big part because of that. Right? 00:55:48 Speaker 3: It feels like the West Dakotas. 00:55:49 Speaker 2: After his mother and his wife died. And it was a very sad time for him, and he recovered himself and really killed horses by riding. 00:55:59 Speaker 3: Them too hard. Is that what he did? 00:56:00 Speaker 2: Right by doing that? And that ranch now has been restored? 00:56:06 Speaker 3: Oh, it has. 00:56:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, Teddy Roosevelt Ranch. 00:56:10 Speaker 3: Roosevelt Ranch. 00:56:11 Speaker 2: And he always kept Bob. 00:56:12 Speaker 3: Yeah. Uh, he. 00:56:15 John: Liked to hunt. Yeah. You know, not everybody. I think lots of great people. Right. Have have, uh. What’s the, you know, don’t have some things that aren’t so great about them, right? Some some characteristics. You know. 00:56:24 Speaker 2: There’s nothing wrong with hunting. And as long as it’s done right. But, uh, he came back here to DC and had this, uh, pal of his, Gifford Pinchot, who was. 00:56:34 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Oh, right. 00:56:36 Speaker 2: A logging family in Pennsylvania. Very wealthy logging family in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And they were both ride horses in the morning here in Rock Creek Park, which was five minutes away from my house. 00:56:45 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:56:45 Speaker 2: And, uh, I spent some time looking for the place in Rock Creek Park where Gifford Pinchot invented the American environmental movement. And I found a likely space, a likely spot. He describes it in his autobiography, Breaking New Ground. He was out one morning on horseback in Rock Creek Park, and he got up on a side hill and looking down he could see Rock Creek and it suddenly struck him. He had this epiphany. Everything is connected. It’s all connected. The air, the water, the trees. And we have to protect it all. And he went back, dumped his horse, raced into the white House and to Teddy Roosevelt’s office, and said, Teddy, it’s all connected. We have to do something about this. And that was the beginning of the American environmental movement, which resulted in the creation of the national parks and the United States Forest Service. 00:57:41 John: Was that before Teddy made his Western three years out, where he lived out west? 00:57:45 Speaker 3: No, it was after. 00:57:46 John: It was. 00:57:46 Speaker 3: After. After? 00:57:47 John: Yeah, right. So it was. So it made sense to Teddy. And so now you have, like, Gifford Pinchot National Forest out in Washington, right? As a giant national forest. So. So, Gifford, he was a he was a what was his what did he do for a living? 00:58:00 Speaker 2: He was he became the head of the first head of the US Forest Service. But his family would, uh, They have a big mansion still in, uh, Pennsylvania. That’s the museum. 00:58:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:58:10 Speaker 2: Uh, they ran this enormous, uh, timber operation up there. Yeah. So he made his money as. 00:58:15 Speaker 3: Timber. 00:58:15 Speaker 2: Cutting down. 00:58:16 Speaker 3: Trees? Yeah. 00:58:16 John: Cutting trees down. Right. There you go. Wow. Well, uh, before we take it out of here in a little bit, I just wanted to check on you. Anything we missed about. I mean, there’s so much with the movie. With the book, with your dad, anything. You. Also, you want to let folks know that maybe would be, uh, inspirational or some fun facts about, you know, everything you have going. 00:58:35 Speaker 3: There’s an opera in the works. 00:58:36 John: Oh, yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Tell me about the opera. 00:58:40 Speaker 2: There’s an opera based on A River Runs Through it. I just sent an email to one of the guys working on it today. They’ve got a libretto. They’ve got wonderful actors and voices. Uh, it’s going to premiere next fall. Next fall during the anniversary. 00:58:54 Speaker 3: And where? 00:58:54 John: Where is this going to be? In Montana. 00:58:56 Speaker 2: In Bozeman, Montana and Bozeman. But they’re going to be in, uh, Brooklyn in the spring and try to get, uh, some of the New York people interested. 00:59:05 Speaker 3: You know. Sure. 00:59:06 Speaker 2: We’ll see. It’s in development. It’s in a late stage of development. 00:59:09 John: Okay. So the celebration, the fiftieth anniversary, you’re going to have that. What else is going on out there? Any other things? 00:59:16 Speaker 2: All right, there’s the opera. There’s the, um, the art show with the wood engravings and the paintings, uh, from Field and Stream. It started in, uh, the National Museum, Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg. They were the first to put it on. And it’s now going to tour in Montana and Idaho for two years. And, uh, it may get picked up. A friend of mine in Oregon wants to pick it up for a year, uh, out in Oregon. And it’s really nice. All these wood engravings, you know, they’re very small. They’re about. 00:59:52 Speaker 3: That. 00:59:52 Speaker 2: Size. But, uh, they’re wonderful things I remember from all the reading I did of of all those junky outdoor magazines. Those were the best. 01:00:01 Speaker 3: Things. 01:00:02 Speaker 2: But they would have kind of parent. You’d call them pen and ink drawings, but they the real ones are wood engravings, and they’re very artistic. They’re fine art. Um, and that’s a lot of fun. 01:00:12 John: So these wood engravings are now describing again, what were they used for? 01:00:16 Speaker 2: They were used as illustration for, uh, three books, uh, for the Barry Moser edition of A River Runs Through It. 01:00:24 Speaker 3: Okay. 01:00:25 Speaker 2: Barry Moser was at the time, and I think it was still regarded as the finest wood engraver in the country. And he did a special edition of A River Runs Through It with his wood engravings. Uh, he gave a set of them to the University of Chicago Press to be used for an edition that they. 01:00:43 Speaker 3: Did, um, using those. 01:00:45 Speaker 2: Things. Uh, I got in touch through a convoluted series of events with the guy who had been the art director at the University Chicago Press at that time, and we talked two or three times. It was an old guy and living alone and, uh, in Virginia. And we had a really nice relationship. And I said, John, would you like to have those? 01:01:05 Speaker 3: Wow. 01:01:06 Speaker 2: He says, I’ve got them. 01:01:07 Speaker 3: I’ve got the ones. 01:01:07 Speaker 2: That the press had. I said, I’d love to. So I got them. I have originals of the ones that were used in my two books, which are conscious imitations of A River Runs Through It. The wood engravings in a River Runs through. That’s why we did it. Uh, so it would look like that. So, you know, you get to get hung for a sheep. You might as well get hung for a lamb and or a lamb or a sheep or whatever it is, you know. 01:01:31 Speaker 3: Right. 01:01:31 Speaker 2: Go the whole. 01:01:32 Speaker 3: Route. Yeah. 01:01:32 Speaker 2: And they were sitting on my desk. They weren’t doing anybody any good. I didn’t even look at them. I’d pile. 01:01:38 Speaker 3: Somewhere. 01:01:39 Speaker 2: And I was fishing with a pal of mine down in Virginia whining about this, saying, you know, I’ve got these beautiful things that don’t do anybody any good. He said, well, I got a friend in Middleburg at the National Sporting Library and Museum. And so they picked it up. Did a beautiful job of framing them and displaying them and getting a lot of people in for an opening and calling out to people in Montana, uh, to see if they wanted to pick it up. The Travelers Rest State Park in Lolo, near Missoula, is going to be the first venue. 01:02:14 Speaker 3: Okay. 01:02:14 Speaker 2: Mary Stockdale, who is the, uh, curator director there, uh, has been the spark who has got the whole thing set up. And then at tours in Montana for two years, uh, including six months at the Charlie Russell Museum in Great Falls. That’s really cool. It’s totally unexpected. 01:02:35 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:02:35 Speaker 2: Uh, fun kind of thing. Then there’s the, uh, semi-annual, uh, biannual, uh, In the Footsteps of Norman McLean Festival, which is going to be held in the fall in Missoula, which is obviously, uh, focused on the, uh, the anniversary. 01:02:52 John: So there’s going to be a new festival. 01:02:55 Speaker 2: Yeah. So it’s a literary festival. Used to be just in Seeley Lake, but they outgrew that. Um, and now most of the people that they used to get who knew my dad are gone. 01:03:05 Speaker 3: Right. 01:03:05 Speaker 2: And so they get all in literary people with big names. Uh, and do that, and they get a lot of people to show up. 01:03:13 Speaker 3: Wow. 01:03:14 John: Amazing. This is great. Well, you know, I guess a couple more. We’ll let you get out of here first on books. We’ve talked obviously a lot about books today. What are your if somebody was going to read a few good books what would you recommend? I think we’ve talked about some of them, but what are your some of your favorites? 01:03:27 Speaker 2: It depends on interest. Uh. 01:03:29 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:03:30 Speaker 2: You know, let’s say we’re dealing with somebody young. 01:03:33 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:03:34 Speaker 2: Who wants to find out about the world and has the advantage of an education, which is going to have them read other books. And I would say, you know, find people you like and read their biographies. 01:03:45 Speaker 3: Okay. 01:03:46 Speaker 2: Try picking up some of the volumes of Winston Churchill’s history of World War two. Uh, get interested in the in. The great events are in fairly recent history, like World War two, uh, like the depression. And immerse yourself in who you are, where you came. 01:04:05 Speaker 3: From. 01:04:06 Speaker 2: Because these things affect you. My whole life has been affected by World War two. 01:04:10 Speaker 3: Mhm. 01:04:10 Speaker 2: Uh, yeah. I wouldn’t have gotten where I am, anywhere near it. Uh, without that happening. I could explain it, but it takes two. 01:04:20 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:04:20 Speaker 2: Uh, so that’s the beginning of it. Find out who you are and find out what great men are really like. 01:04:26 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:04:27 Speaker 2: And women. 01:04:28 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:04:29 Speaker 2: And you can be kind of random about this. Uh, you could do Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth, right? You could do, uh, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. 01:04:40 Speaker 3: Right? 01:04:41 Speaker 2: You know, find out about some of the ugly customers. 01:04:43 John: I was going to say, what about the you know, you’ve got some of the ugliest around the world. Do you think it’s helpful to read up on some of them? Like, probably one of the worst is Hitler, right? 01:04:51 Speaker 2: Oh, right. Um, so it’s a good thing to find out about him. 01:04:55 John: Yeah. What do you get when you read? What do you. When you read something? Because I struggle with that. I’ve watched some documentaries on some of this, and, you know, it’s it’s a struggle because it’s so horrific. What do you get when you read about somebody like that? 01:05:08 Speaker 2: What I get is, how did we get sucked into this? 01:05:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:05:11 Speaker 2: How did he. 01:05:11 Speaker 3: Happen? 01:05:12 John: Right. 01:05:12 Speaker 2: What were the events that made that kind of a man so deeply evil and wrong? Possible. And if you don’t think that that isn’t relevant today, you haven’t thought enough about it. 01:05:26 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:05:27 Speaker 2: See, all this winds up being working into today because you got to live a life. You’re dealing with young people. You know, you’re not reading this just to amuse yourself. You’re reading this because you’re going to focus on it. 01:05:40 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:05:40 Speaker 2: You know, it’s going to be there’s some use to you which it should be, or you’re going to go running around saying, uh, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free and not really realize what the hell you’re saying. 01:05:51 John: Right, right, right. 01:05:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I covered the Middle East for ten. 01:05:55 John: Oh. 01:05:55 Speaker 2: You did? Uh, yeah. And I had my problems with the state of Israel. And, uh, I thought the Palestinians had some justice in their cause and gave them a break, but. Wait a minute. You know, what’s happened recently is very different from that. So don’t just look at what it is today. Look at the whole history of Gaza. How did it wind up on October seventh? Yeah. Where did that start? From the time the Israelis pulled out to October seventh, what happened? Why wasn’t that a success? Money poured in by the billions of dollars to make that a success. They had a viable economy. You should read some things that explain to you how this these things evolve. Yeah, because the evolution of events is happening so fast now you can’t keep up with it. 01:06:45 John: Well, it’s different now, right? With social media and stuff. which is kind of crazy. 01:06:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, it just races ahead of you and there’s no tail to the comet. Yeah, there’s just the comet, right? 01:06:56 John: Yeah. No, that’s a great. And I think the history for sure is a great reminder for everybody. So so we’ll make sure to get that going. Tell me one thing before we get out. We haven’t talked much about fly fishing. Are you still. Do you. Did you get into fly fishing? Is this something that you, uh, yeah. You’ve done a little fly fishing. 01:07:12 Speaker 2: It’s wonderful. Yeah, yeah, that’s a lifelong and, uh, been very different things at different times. Uh, I don’t fish much now. As much now as I’d like to. Yeah, partly because I was been writing this book. Right. I writing a book about what it’s like to be a fly fisherman in old age. Yeah. And it takes so much time that I don’t go fishing. Uh, so I still get out. 01:07:35 John: And when is the new book going to be out? The new book you’re working on, which is talk about that. When’s that going to be out, do you think? 01:07:40 Speaker 2: Uh, well, it depends on the publisher. I’d like to get it out next year, for next year as part of the fiftieth. 01:07:45 John: Okay. And do you have a title yet? 01:07:46 Speaker 2: Fishing into the twilight. 01:07:48 John: Yeah, fishing into twilight. And remind us again that the premise right now is probably going to evolve. But what is it right now? Focused on. 01:07:55 Speaker 2: The premise? Initial premise is what it’s like to be a fly fisherman when you’re old, and you can’t do it the way you used to do it. Uh, what are the rewards, as well as the challenges are easy enough to figure out and need to talk about those a little bit. But what are the rewards of this? You know, what can you do with this when you’re like me in your eighties and you can’t wade the way you’re used to? But wait a minute. This is a this is really is a lifetime sport. Yeah. And there are things you can do, uh, get involved in conservation. You can take spiritual satisfaction from it that you didn’t before. You can take your kids fishing. Your kids can take you fishing. 01:08:32 John: That’s right. They can take you. 01:08:33 Speaker 2: That’s a big. 01:08:34 John: Deal. Yeah. 01:08:35 Speaker 2: I asked the question on, uh, on Facebook at a couple of, uh, sites that, uh, are classic fishing sites. I said, hey, I’m doing this. Well, what do you guys think about fishing when you’re old? What are the rewards? And surprising uniformity in a lot of points. One is fathers and sons. Big deal. You know, my father taught me how to fish. I taught my son, and we still go out together. Uh, it was a very common theme, uh, and a wonderful one. I don’t need to catch a basketful of fish or catch a bunch of fish anymore. It’s being out there. It’s being part of it. Yeah. Uh, that is the great reward. Right. And then there are the kind of poignant, funny, almost funny stories. 01:09:21 John: Yeah. 01:09:21 Speaker 2: Joe was a guy who loved fishing alone and, uh, did it all his life. And one day his wife called his best friend and said, Joe went out this morning, went fishing, and he hasn’t come home. Uh, could you check on him for me? So Joe’s buddy went out and said, I’ll go to his favorite spot, And he did. And I’ll go to his favorite hole. And he did. And sure enough, there was Joe on the bank. He’d had a heart attack or a stroke, and he was dead. And he had his fly rod in his hand. And so his friend said, gosh, that’s too bad. But that’s not a bad way to go. Picked up the fly rod. Whoa, whoa, wait. 01:10:03 John: Had a fish on. 01:10:05 Speaker 2: Great big brown. 01:10:06 John: No way. 01:10:06 Speaker 2: On the end of the thing. 01:10:08 John: And who is and who’s Joe? 01:10:09 Speaker 2: Joe was just a guy. 01:10:10 John: Yeah, just a guy. 01:10:11 Speaker 2: This was a story one of these guys told. 01:10:12 John: Right, right. That’s an amazing story. 01:10:15 Speaker 2: So it was a true story. 01:10:16 John: That’s amazing. And I and I resonate with everything you’re talking about because my dad, when he was getting older, uh, actually, for the last, probably fifteen years or so, you know, he always taught me how to fish, and he took me down in the boat and stuff, and eventually it switched, and I was taking him down the river and the drift boat, and it was the only way he could get out. And he did it for about probably fifteen years. And now he’s at an age where I remember he told me somewhere, maybe five or ten years ago, I asked him like, had you, you know, have you been fishing lately? And he basically just said kind of almost like he was mad. Like, you know, I can’t do it anymore. You know what I mean? He said he couldn’t do it. And it was kind of like I was like, wow. I didn’t even think about it. But yeah, he kind of got to that point and everything. So now he’s struggling with lots of other things. But for me, I have two daughters now and they’re eleven and thirteen. And like, that’s exactly what resonates with me, because, you know, we just went on a road trip this year and they both caught two of their biggest rainbows on the, you know, on the fly. And I was right there with them. And it goes back to my again my, my dad and that still and again you have that same sort of right with you. You probably think about that when you write the connections and all the time. 01:11:16 Speaker 2: That’s a wonderful story. I think one of the big things that’s happened in our lifetimes is that women have started coming in, and they do really well with fishing. Yeah. Thank you. Joan. 01:11:24 John: Yeah. 01:11:24 Speaker 2: Joan Wright, you know, she’s done a great job of introducing women. And and when you see him fish it’s a little different. You know they’re they’re sewing. Yeah very. 01:11:34 John: They’re better a lot of ways. They’re better. 01:11:36 Speaker 2: Precision. 01:11:37 John: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. John. Well, I think we could leave it there. I’ve got tons of questions I could ask you, but maybe we’ll follow up with you down the line and get you back on. I want to say thanks for this episode. This has been great. And I appreciate, you know, all the good stuff you’re doing to help celebrate, you know, what your dad did and kind of everything and what you’re doing. So we’ll follow up with you. John McLean, Books.com if people want to follow up and connect with you. And thanks for all the time today. 01:12:01 Speaker 2: You’re very welcome. And if the book comes out next year, let’s do it again. 01:12:07 John: There you go. If you want to check in with John, we mentioned it there and get any of his books, check either, uh, things that he mentioned or things that are, uh, coming soon. Check in at John McLean Books.com and let them know you heard this podcast. And, uh, and that would be a great start to your day. Uh, if you’re interested in checking out Wet Fly Swing Pro, you can do that right now. And, uh, also want to give a big shout out to, uh, YouTube if you’re interested in watching this video on YouTube, we actually have the full video version. We’re starting to do this with some select, uh, podcast episodes. So not only is it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else like normal, but check it out on YouTube, subscribe to us, follow the show there, and you’ll also support, uh, our growing YouTube channel. And, uh, and that’s what I got for that. I hope you’re having a good day. I want to let you know, the Atlantic Salmon School we mentioned on this podcast is going right now, if you’re interested. We do have a couple of spots still available for the Atlantic Salmon School in Newfoundland. Crazy fish, big fish. Uh, take and dry flies on the surface. Swinging for Atlantic salmon in Newfoundland. Check it out right now. Send me an email if you have any questions. I want to thank you for stopping in today. Hope you have a great afternoon. If it’s evening, hope you’re having a good evening and if it’s morning, hope you enjoy that morning and uh, look forward to seeing you on the river and hopefully enjoying some time on an upcoming trip. We’ll talk to you then.