{"id":1129,"date":"2005-06-03T09:41:25","date_gmt":"2005-06-03T16:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2005\/06\/memory_lane_woodward_sort_of_o\/"},"modified":"2005-06-03T09:41:25","modified_gmt":"2005-06-03T16:41:25","slug":"memory_lane_woodward_sort_of_o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2005\/06\/memory_lane_woodward_sort_of_o.html","title":{"rendered":"MEMORY LANE: WOODWARD SORT OF OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/A>Now that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are together again<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, taking a victory lap<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> after all these years,
\nlike the Simon & Garfunkel of journalism, I’m reminded by my staff of thousands that once upon a
\ntime, long ago and far away, I interviewed Woodward about his only non-political book — the one
\nout of the Beltway, for which he is least known — “Wired: The
\nShort Life & Fast Times of John Belushi.”<\/FONT><\/B>
\n

<\/P>
\n

<\/A>Woodward was already a media superstar, having followed up his and Bernstein’s
\nchronicle of Richard Nixon’s fall — “All the
\nPresident’s Men”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> and “The
\nFinal Days”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> — with his own “The Brethren,”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> about the secret workings of the U.S.
\nSupereme Court. It was 1984. Woodward was 41, twice-divorced at the time, and the doting
\nfather of a 7-year-old daughter by his second marriage. He was living in a large Georgetown
\nhouse with Elsa Walsh, then a 26-year-old education reporter whom he later married. (She’s now
\nat The New Yorker, and they’re still married.)<\/P>
\n

You’ll excuse me for this nostalgia trip. But my staff insists. So here goes. Woodward had
\ncome to Chicago for the interview. The town where he grew up, Wheaton, Ill., was not far away.
\nHis brother and sister lived there. His father was a retired judge who was still practicing law there.
\nBelushi, too, had grown up in Wheaton. Predictably, I began by asking about that.<\/P>
\n


\n

What was your life there?<\/I>
\n

<\/P>Probably very much the same as his. One of the things I didn’t put in the book, and
\nprobably should have, was that when I was in the 8th grade I got the American Legion Award. I
\nwas the good clean guy. Belushi got it, too, when he was in the 8th grade six years later in the
\nearly ’60s. When I learned that, I thought, ‘Gee, that is not the guy I saw on “Saturday Night
\nLive.” That struck close to home.
\n

<\/P>
\n

How did it change?<\/I><\/P>
\n

A good friend of mine got me interested in books. John Belushi got interested in rock ‘n’ roll.
\nThat’s one primordial difference.<\/P>
\n

Both of us played on the same high school football team with the same coach, Howard
\nBarnes. I remember he put me on the team and said, “You have the best attitude of anyone. But
\nyou’re one of the worst football players.” I think Belushi was the opposite. He was one of the best
\nfootball players and had one of the worst attitudes. …
\n

You were attracted to the Belushi story because you said it was about “the failure of
\nsuccess.” What were the pressues on you from fame and success?<\/I>
\n

You’ve got a lot of people wanting things — people saying “This is the way you ought to
\ninvest,” or “Why don’t you come to my party?” You’re on call. It seems to me the defense against
\nthat, which is quite artificial, is not to take success too seriously. To sort of see that it was luck.
\nAnd to realize very quickly how easy it could have been a failure.<\/P>
\n

Certainly Watergate for me was like that. A lot of people thought we were wrong, and it
\nseemed like a failure for many months. So the dividing line between success and failure is not that
\ngreat.<\/P>
\n

Wasn’t there any exhilaration?<\/I><\/P>
\n

Look, Watergate was not a happy story. Just like the Belushi story. They’re somewhat alike in
\nthat respect. You don’t get any joy out of it.<\/P>
\n

You must have gotten some joy from clinching the story.<\/I><\/P>I remember the night
\nNixon resigned. I was sitting in the office of the Washington Post. Carl and I weren’t writing that
\nstory. I was eating a baloney sandwich, watching his speech. We were sort of saying, “We don’t
\nhave a story to write. What are we gonna do?” I remember getting in my car — it was raining that
\nnight — and just sort of feeling a little empty. There was no dancing.
\n

<\/P>
\n

How different were the pressures on you from those on Belushi?<\/I><\/P>
\n

There’s the same pressure to have a second act. And a third. And a fourth. The thing that has
\nhelped me the most is being anchored at the Washington Post. Unless they want to fire me, I’ll
\nalways stay there. If you stick to what you’ve learned to do and not try other things like writing
\nnovels or going into television or writing screenplays, it gives you an anchor.<\/P>
\n

That sounds like a veiled reference to Bernstein. What’s the different between how you
\ndealt with your success and how he did?<\/I><\/P>
\n

We’ve both made mistakes, and we went on. …
\n

Was your relationship with him ever threatened?<\/I><\/P>
\n

Oh yeah, all the time. We didn’t like each other at first. We didn’t get on. There was always a
\nstruggle between us. Strong egos. different points of view. Different
\nideas.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

Arrrgghhh. Enough with the nostalgia. It’s funky Friday. I’m outta here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are together again, taking a victory lap after all these years, like the Simon & Garfunkel of journalism, I’m reminded by my staff of thousands that once upon a time, long ago and far away, I interviewed Woodward about his only non-political book — the one out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-id","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}