Rick Reilly

How did you become a writer?

I always wrote. When I was a kid we had our own little Home Run Derby league and I wrote a little newspaper that went with it. I made us all sound like Mickey Mantle, with lurid tales of nightclub visits and movie-star dates and heroic building-on-fire deeds. I don't know why. Don't ask. I was always writing stuff and had no idea it could be a career. I was always the guy in high school who wrote the one-act play or the skit while everybody else got to go drink beer by the creek. Finally, I won the high-school sports writing contest through my school newspaper. The guy who judged it -- anonymously -- was the assistant sports editor at my hometown Boulder (CO) Daily Camera. That summer, I got a job working as a bank teller and who was working next to me but his wife. So I bugged her every day for months. Finally, exhausted, she came in one morning and said, "Go see him." And he hired me!  

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I read "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton eight times. Practically memorized it. That life seemed so hilarious and glamorous to me. Loved Damon Runyon, especially all the "On Broadway" stories about two-bit criminals talking like Shakespeare. Must've read that 20 times. I think I've read every column ever written by Jim Murray, the great Los Angeles Times sports columnist, who was not just my hero but became my friend and mentor. Also: P.G. Wodehouse, Mike Royko, Blackie Sherrod, and Oscar Wilde, who changed my life when he wrote, "Never write a sentence you've already read." It hit me across the head like a 2-by-4 and improved my writing tenfold.

When and where do you write?

I do great on airplanes, in bars and in diners. I find writing so lonely that I need to be some place where I know life is still going on, people are still laughing, women are still sashaying. It comforts me that it will all be over soon. So I go to little cafes and coffee shops where they'll let me sit for three hours without yelling at me to move along and everybody knows not to come up to me and ask who the Minnesota Timberwolves are going to sign for their backup power forward.

What are you working on now?

Ha! Surely you jest. At ESPN? There's no time for working on anything but ESPN. ESPN is like Europe. TV is England and ESPN.com is Italy and radio is Sweden and the magazine is Germany and nobody cares about any other country but their own. They want their country to be the best country in history. So Italy doesn't care that England needs you to finish the script and England doesn't care about Sweden needing you to prep for the show. Meanwhile, Germany wants to know why you can't fly to Baltimore and do a story. ... So I've got a bunch of good movie and book ideas that sit and mope in my laptop.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. Never. If I get stuck, I either switch diners or drink another macchiato or start in the middle and hope the lead comes bopping along later. I always tell young people who have trouble with writer's block the same thing: Write one sentence. Write the last sentence. Write a terrible sentence. Just get something on the screen and words will stick to it like hot socks on a hot towel.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don't write for free. Why should any of these websites pay anybody if everybody's willing to write for free? And they should pay you. Huffington Post paid squat and then sold for $315 million. Associated Content paid bupkus and then sold for $100 million. You have a proven marketable skill. All these sites are starved for content and you know how to provide it. Get paid for it. Even if it's $25. They'll respect you more in the morning.

Rick Reilly, 54, has been voted National Sportswriter of the Year 11 times. He is a front-page columnist for ESPN.com and delivers television features for ESPN's Monday Night Countdown, for ESPN's and ABC's golf coverage, as well as for ESPN SportsCenter, which he also occasionally anchors.

       If that doesn't keep him busy enough, he's also the host of Homecoming with Rick Reilly, ESPN's one-hour interview show which has featured Michael Phelps, John Elway and Magic Johnson, among many others. He is also an occasional anchor for SportsCenter.

       He is the author of 10 books, including his latest -- Sports From Hell, My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition (Doubleday). The book was a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize. It’s the account of his three-year search for the dumbest sport in the world. Not to give anything away, but a good bet would be either Ferret Legging or the World Sauna Championships. It also includes embarrassing attempts by Reilly to try Nude Bicycle Racing, Zorbing, Chess Boxing, Extreme Ironing, the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships, and an unfortunate week on a women’s pro football team.

       Reilly won the 2009 Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism, an honor previously won by Jimmy Breslin, Tim Russert, Bob Costas, Mike Royko, George Will, Ted Turner and Tom Brokaw, among others. Three times his columns have been read into the record in the U.S. Congress. An astronaut once took his signed trading card into space.

       The New York Daily News called him “one of the funniest humans on the planet.” Publishers Weekly called him, “an indescribable amalgam of Dave Barry, Jim Murray, and Lewis Grizzard, with the timing of Jay Leno and the wit of Johnny Carson.”

       He has written about everything from ice skater Katarina Witt behind the Iron Curtain to actor Jack Nicholson in the front row, from wrestling priests in Mexico City to mushers at the Iditarod, from playing golf with President Clinton to playing golf with O.J. Simpson and back again. He was once President Obama's fantasy football partner for a week. He has five times had the disagreeable task of accompanying the models on the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. He was once featured in a Miller Lite ad with swimsuit cover girl Rebecca Romijn (Stamos). In July of 2010, he survived running with the bulls of Pamplona, Spain. Twice.

       For nearly 23 years – from 1985 until 2007 -- his breezy, hilarious and yet often emotional style graced the pages of Sports Illustrated. For the last 10 there, he wrote the popular “Life of Reilly” column, which ran on the last page. It was the first signed weekly opinion column in the magazine’s long history. He is “the Tiger Woods of sports columnists,” says Bloomberg News.

       Reilly is the founder of the anti-malaria effort Nothing But Nets (NothingButNets.net), which had raised over $36 million (as of September, 2011) to hang mosquito nets over kids in Africa, where 3,000 children die every day of the disease. A partnership with the United Nations Foundation, every dollar goes to buying the nets. (NothingButNets.net) Wrote the Denver Post, “Nothing but Nets is one charity that scores big.”

       His last collection -- “Hate Mail from Cheerleaders" -- included 100 of his best SI columns. The foreword is by Lance Armstrong. It became a New York Times bestseller in its first week.

       His current novel “Shanks for Nothing” (Doubleday) is a madcap golf romp that cracked the New York Times bestseller list. It’s the sequel to Reilly’s cult classic “Missing Links” (Doubleday), whose film rights were recently sold to Steve Carell, star of NBC’s The Office. Both books revolve around regulars at the worst public course in America – Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Links and Deli --  and the insane bets, pranks and camaraderie that goes on there. The New York Times hailed “Missing Links” as “three laughs per page.”

       In Reilly’s previous book -- “Who’s Your Caddy?” (Doubleday) -- he caddies for everyone from Jack Nicklaus to Donald Trump to a $50,000-a-hole gambler. It rose to No. 3 on the New York Times best-seller list.

His first collection of columns -- “The Life of Reilly: The Best of Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly” -- was also a New York Times bestseller.

       Slo-Mo: My Untrue Story, (Doubleday) is a farce on the NBA, which the Denver Post called, “a romp that could have been written only by someone who has seen the game from the inside.”

Reilly is the co-author of the movie "Leatherheads," the comic romance centered on the 1924 Duluth Eskimos of the fledgling NFL, starring George Clooney, Renee Zellweger and John Krasinski. It opened on April 4, 2008. MTV called it “a small, unassuming jewel.” And USA Today wrote: “Leatherheads is a real winner.”

       His ESPN interview show Homecoming, is a kind of cross between This is Your Life and Inside the Actor’s Studio, for sports. The show goes deep inside the life of America’s greatest athletes. Filmed in front of a live audience, usually at the guest’s high school or college, it’s full of surprises, with home video, interviews with old teammates and coaches, family, friends and rivals. Jerry Rice,  Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul, Emmitt Smith, Billie Jean King, Donovan McNabb and Tony Hawk have been guests, to name a few. "That was the greatest night of my life," soccer star Landon Donovan said of it. Magic Johnson called it, "The most fun interview I've ever done."

       Probably too curious for his own good, Reilly has flown upside down at 600 miles per hour in an F-14, faced fastballs from Nolan Ryan, jumped from 14,000 feet with the U.S. Army Parachute Team, driven a stock car 142 miles per hour, piloted the Goodyear blimp, competed against 107 women for a spot in the WNBA, worked three innings of play-by-play for the Colorado Rockies, bicycled with Lance Armstrong, driven a monster truck over six parked cars, worked as a rodeo bullfighter, and found out the hard way how many straight par 3s he’d have to play before he made a hole in one (694).

       Reilly has won numerous awards in his 30-year writing career, including the prestigious New York Newspaper Guild's Page One Award for Best Magazine Story. He is the co-author of ``The Boz,'' the best-selling autobiography of bad-boy Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth; “Gretzky,'' with hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings; ``I'd Love to but I Have a Game'' with NBC announcer Marv Albert, and the ``The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Barkley.''

       Reilly began his career in 1979 taking phoned-in high-school volleyball scores for his hometown Boulder (Colo.)  Daily Camera while a sophomore at the University of Colorado, from which he was graduated in 1981. He wrote for two years at the Camera, two more at the Denver Post and two more at the Los Angeles Times, before moving to Sports Illustrated in 1985.

       Reilly dabbles in magic, piano, mountain biking, SCUBA, back-alley basketball, skiing and snowboarding. He lives in Denver and Hermosa Beach, CA, with his wife -- The Lovely Cynthia -- and a putter he’s not currently speaking to.

-- endit -- 

Pen Densham

How did you become a writer?

Despite my apparent success as a writing filmmaker, the early part of my career involved making many Oscar nominated and award-winning documentaries that required no dramatic script at all. I was not even certain I had any skills as a writer until I discovered the CFC were willing to fund young filmmakers with passion projects. I decided to try my hand at creating a drama. I didn't know how to lay out a script, never worked with an actor, but I wrote a half-hour drama called IF WISHES WERE HORSES, about a down-and-out horse owner whose mare was breach birthing - which meant that he was involved in a life and death crisis, having to choose between the mare and the foal. That movie brought me to the attention of Norman Jewison who mentored me into Hollywood and convinced me that I should continue my dramatic career as a writing filmmaker. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

As a child, I always read two or three grades above my age group and loved science fiction, particularly Robert Heinlein. I also came to an immense respect for Robert Bolt and the work he did with David Lean. But probably my most impactful experience was meeting Billy Wilder when he came to view Sunset Boulevard for the last time.  I'd been invited to be there. Billy Wilder's career blows me away. Not only did he write in a second language, but he wrote dramas and comedies that are as powerful today as they were in his time. When you pick up a book of movie quotes more lines are quoted from his scripts than most other screenwriters put together. It's humbling to see what he achieved. 

When and where do you write?

Whilst I have a home office, I've yet to be able to train my brain to give me ideas at the exact moment when I want them. I live my life with sticky notes everywhere, frequently jumping out of the shower to jot down a damp but important thought -- or waking up at 3a.m. to capture a line of dialogue that the Gods have given me in my sleep. I don't find that I write coherently, but more like I harvest it when my subconscious delivers its next creative energy. I've learned to take down what it gives me, when it gives it to me - or regret the loss of my leisure. 

What are you working on now?

I'm in the process of completing post-production on my friend and ally Todd Robinson's script that he wrote/directed called PHANTOM - a submarine thriller starring Ed Harris and David Duchovny. Todd writes from the heart and it's a great pleasure for my producing partner John Watson and I to champion his creative work. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

The question could probably be re-phrased 'Have you ever NOT suffered from Writer's Block?' -- and that happened once, when I wrote a script called MOLL FLANDERS that poured out of my soul in a gusher of words, emotions and scenes.  It was a riveting and joyous experience that I yearn to find again. Most of the time my writing process is a mixture of wonder and frustration. I was once advised that the best way to overcome writer's block is to lower your expectations by playfully saying to yourself that you are writing "a piece of crap". It takes the tension out of the process and helps to free up the idea flow, which inevitably will be edited into something refined and quite wonderful, in time.     

What’s your advice to new writers?

It would sound very inauthentic to say that I would like them to read my book because it sounds like I'm trying to gain something from them financially. But I truly have tried to distill a lifetime's worth of positive - and negative - experiences into a survivor's guide for a certain kind of emotional writer, who years to develop their voice and survive in a complex and not always sympathetic business. Rather than buy my book, I would like people to download a free chapter that attempts to help fire up one's creativity, and also to see the inspirational videos and other essays that are on my website, ridingthealligator.com. If they touch you, then probably my book would be the right choice to help and advise.

Pen Densham, co-founder of Trilogy Entertainment Group, considers himself a triple-hyphenate: a writer – producer – & director. He and his partner John Watson have been Oscar Nominated twice, have produced 15 features and over 300 hours of television. He writes for both TV and feature films and is personally responsible for reviving 'The Outer Limits' and 'The Twilight Zone' series to television, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, etc. This year he is one of the Producers on Phantom – written and directed by Todd Robinson, starring David Duchovny and Ed Harris. His personal favorite is Moll Flanders, which he wrote and directed, starring Robin Wright and Morgan Freeman. Pen also teaches as an adjunct professor at USC Film School. His book on screenplay writing for publisher Michael Wiese is - "Riding the Alligator: Strategies for a Career in Screenplay Writing ...And not getting eaten.” 

Jay Parini

How did you become a writer?

I started by writing poems in college -- terrible poems. But during my junior year in Scotland (St. Andrews) I felt a sense of a personal voice -- and found myself writing a good deal, reading a good deal: Eliot, Frost, Stevens, Wordsworth, Blake. And especially Gerard Manley Hopkins. From then on, one thing led to another, as I moved from poetry to prose, still writing poems as well but expanding into criticism, then fiction. Eventually I wrote biographies as well, after having written THE LAST STATION, a novel about Tolstoy. Now I seem to write screenplays as much as anything else.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

In Scotland, I met the Scottish poet Alastair Reid. He was a huge influence, as a poet and mentor. Most of my ideas about writing fell into place then. I met, through him, Borges and even Neruda -- just in passing. But these writers played a huge role in my imagination. Later, I met Robert Penn Warren and Gore Vidal, both of whom were mentors and, most of all, good friends. Warren was a model as teacher/critic/poet/novelist.

When and where do you write?

I write mostly in the morning, mostly in a local cafe, although I work at home in my study as well, more in the afternoons and evenings.

What are you working on now?

There are always a number of poems in progress. I'm finishing a ghost story -- a novel -- set on Lake Champlain -- I've been through it many times but it still needs work. I'm writing a biography of Jesus. And I'm revising two screenplays based on earlier novels of mine: Benjamin's Crossing and The Passages of H.M.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. Never. It's an artificial problem. If you're blocked, you shouldn’t be writing. You should be fishing. Or mowing the lawn. Or fixing things. Or anything.

What’s your advice to new writers?

There is really only one worthwhile piece of advice. Write about what really interests you, and do it every day. If you don't do it everyday, you'll never do it. Getting a habit of writing is the key: pick a time of day when you can manage it, and arrange your life so that this time is sacred. Use that time, and don't fret about not getting anything done. That is your time to write. If you just read during that time, that's okay too. Reading and writing go hand in hand. When my reading is not going well, my writing falters. I need to be excited about what I'm reading. Everything follows from that.

Jay Parini, a poet, novelist, and biographer, teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has written such novels as The Last Station, Benjamin's Crossing, The Apprentice Lover, and The Passages of H.M. His books of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. He has written biographies of Steinbeck, Frost, and Faulkner. He has also written several volumes of essays and Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America.