Other segments from the episode on September 20, 2024
Transcript
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
When I heard that Apple TV+ would be airing a series called "Bad Monkey," I knew it would be funny. That's because it's based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen, which I read in 2013, when he was on FRESH AIR. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and our interview, which we'll listen back to today. Hiaasen is a native of Florida, a longtime newspaper columnist and humor writer who became a go-to guest for TV journalists when something big happened in the Sunshine State.
He's some combination of cultural ambassador, social critic and voice of doom, railing against greedy developers, corrupt politicians and hordes of outsiders who come to plunder the state's natural riches. Hiaasen's written a series of mystery novels set in Florida as well as children's books. His novel "Strip Tease" was made into a film starring Demi Moore, and his 1986 book "Tourist Season" was described as the first book about sex, murder and corruption on the professional bass fishing circuit.
"Bad Monkey" is a typically funny and offbeat murder mystery set in Key West. The Apple TV+ series stars Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, a wise-cracking detective intent on solving a mystery that begins with an unidentified severed arm and takes him through some beautiful Florida scenery. Or, as David Bianculli said in his review, it's good Florida fun. Here's my 2013 interview with Carl Hiaasen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DAVIES: Carl Hiaasen, welcome back to FRESH AIR. I thought we would begin with having you read us a bit from "Bad Monkey." This is the opening of Chapter 4, a description of the main character, Andrew Yancy. You want to just set this up for us?
CARL HIAASEN: Yeah. Yancy was a detective with the Monroe County sheriff's office, which is the Florida Keys. And he - due to some misbehavior, he got busted down to what's called the roach patrol, which is - basically he's now inspecting the kitchens of various restaurants for vermin. And so it's somewhat of not a lateral career move, and he's coping with it the best he can. And that's just how we start.
(Reading) Yancy received his first bribe offer at a tin-roofed seafood joint on Stock Island called Stoney's Crab Palace, where he had documented 17 serious health violations, including mouse droppings, rat droppings, chicken droppings, a tick nursery, open vats of decomposing shrimp, lobsters dating back to the first Bush presidency and, on a tray of baked oysters, a soggy condom.
(Reading) The owner's name was Brennan. He was slicing plantains when Yancy delivered the feared verdict. I got to shut you down. A hundred bucks says you won't. Jesus. Is that blood on your knife? OK, 200 bucks, said Brennan. Why aren't you wearing gloves, Yancy asked. Brennan continued slicing. Nilsson never gave me no trouble. He ate here all the time. And he died of hepatitis. He ate for free. That was our deal. Six years - never once did he step foot in my kitchen. Nilsson was a good man. Nilsson was a lazy f***-whistle, Yancy said. I'm writing you up.
DAVIES: And that is our guest, Carl Hiaasen, reading from his new novel, "Bad Monkey." You know, you've written so much about Florida. In some respects, you're kind of a cultural representative of the state, almost, I suppose. It's a big place with a lot of different regions. And, you know, Key West is different from Miami. You want to talk just a little bit - talk a little bit about Key West and its, you know, cultural vibe?
HIAASEN: Well, I mean, Key West - I've always had a fond spot in my heart for Key West. It's very different from Miami. It's very different from the Panhandle. It's way different from Central Florida. It's been a pirate outpost since the 1800s. It was an area that, at the turn of the century - I mean the 19th century, turning to the 20th century - it was the wealthiest city per capita in the United States because of the treasure salvaging business. It existed on sort of the plunder of ships that went aground on the reefs in Key West.
And so it's always attracted - if you go back, you know, to Hemingway, you go back, you know - I mean, it's attracted characters and outlaws and brigands from the early days. And it still does, to some extent. Certainly it was huge in the drug smuggling trade in the '70s and '80s, and it's always sort of had laws of its own. And it's just a very, very colorful and diverse place to write about.
DAVIES: Right. And for folks that don't know the geography, I mean, it is among the Florida Keys, this little string of islands that extend out from the bottom of Florida. It's the very last one.
HIAASEN: Yeah, and it has the famous southernmost point in the United States - a little strip of beach with some sort of marker there that you can go get your picture taken. And it's - you know, and now, of course, they have cruise ships coming in, and that plays a bit of a part in the - in "Bad Monkey."
DAVIES: Right. And the murder plot begins with the very first paragraph of the book, which - with your permission, I'll just read it.
HIAASEN: (Laughter) OK.
DAVIES: (Reading) On the hottest day of July, trolling in dead calm waters near Key West, a tourist named James Mayberry reeled up a human arm. His wife flew to the bow of the boat and tossed her breakfast burritos.
In that lovely passage, we get a Carl Hiaasen kind of classic, I suppose - a grisly image of a crime and also a good laugh. Where did the severed arm come from?
HIAASEN: Well, there's even a line in the novel that refers to - for years, South Florida was sort of the severed body parts capital of North America. I mean, this was back, you know, in the drug wars and, in the days before that, the mob wars. I mean, we were one of the early vacation spots for the - all of the five crime families from New York. So we have plenty of experience with severed body parts, and they turn up all the time. And they go into the morgue, and they're cataloged.
And in this case, it was just, you know, a day of fishing that - and initially, the thought is that this was a boating accident, and somebody had drowned. And the shark had taken the rest of the body, which is normally what, you know, you would guess in this situation. It doesn't turn out that way, but that's initially what everybody thinks - that somebody sunk their boat and, you know, a shark moved in and took advantage of it. But, of course, that isn't the way it is in this story.
DAVIES: Right. And one of the things that you describe is that there's a lot of, you know, charter fishing out there. And...
HIAASEN: Yeah.
DAVIES: This happens on a charter fishing boat. And I wonder if...
HIAASEN: Yes.
DAVIES: ...This is true - that some of these companies have a way of scamming some gulllible sports fisherman into thinking he's caught a sailfish. Does this really happen?
HIAASEN: Well, this happened once, and the Herald - the Miami Herald wrote about it. And in fact, we sent a a fake guy out on the boat to pretend he was fishing, and we had another boat watching it happen. And this was years ago, but it's an absolutely true story. They - it was called the sailfish, the dead sailfish scam. And what it was is they would load up the boat with sort of an unlikely - I mean, usually very, very gullible tourists. And a mate would provide a distraction. Say he'd see something on the other side of the boat. Hey. Look over there. There's a school of dolphin, or there's a - whatever.
And while he was doing that, another mate would reach into the icebox and pull out a sailfish that had been caught long ago, hook him on the line, let him loose in the back - you know, just kind of release it into the back of the boat, and then shout, fish on, fish on. And these - somebody would run back and reel in this limp, dead remains of a sailfish, which, of course, never jumps the way that sailfish are supposed to. But they were able to recycle this a fair number of times if you had a dumb enough customer.
And what - the reason they did it was because they got a commission on the taxidermy. They would send the dimensions into a taxidermy shop, and at the end of the day, the guy was so thrilled to have caught a sailfish, he'd write a check, and the boat would pocket part of the check. So that was the scam, and it went on for a while until we wrote about it and took some pictures for the Herald. But it was one of the more brazen and ingenious scams I think I've ever heard about. I mean, it's a great deal of trouble to go to for a $7,500 fish deposit. But at the time, it was just classic South Florida. I mean, it was perfect. And it also said a lot about the quality of tourists we had at the time.
DAVIES: (Laughter) Come and show me a good time. I don't care whether it's real or not.
HIAASEN: No, we don't care. Let's reel in a dead fish.
DAVIES: There's a part of the story that takes place in the Bahamas, and there's a...
HIAASEN: Yes.
DAVIES: ...Woman known as the Dragon Queen. Do you want to describe...
HIAASEN: Yes.
DAVIES: ...Her and tell us where she came from?
HIAASEN: Well, I'll describe her as far as I can. I spent a lot of time over in the Bahamas, and I like it quite a bit over there, do a lot of fishing over there. But I heard this tale repeated on several visits about a woman who was sort of a black widow figure who had - at least three of her boyfriends had died under mysterious circumstances after breaking up with her. A fourth had fled to Cuba. And she was a practitioner of voodoo, and the whole island was terrified of her. And I made some efforts to sort of see her house or at least where she lived. I didn't really want to make her acquaintance or take her out for dinner or anything.
But I just thought it would be - but I couldn't find anyone who would take me even into the neighborhood. They said they would drop me off and let me walk, and I - being the chicken at heart that I am, I didn't do it. But I did sort of - I was inspired by the story of this person, who is still very much alive. So I just sort of shamelessly stole the stories that I had heard and weaved it into this character who plays a part, along with the bad monkey, of course.
Now, the monkey - I didn't have any particular inspiration for the monkey. But I did know that the Johnny Depp pirate movies were all filmed near this area that I was writing about, and they had a number of monkeys that they used. You know, they have the main monkey. They have a stand-in monkey. They have a stunt monkey. You know, I knew all that, so I just kind of took that idea and ran with it. But I - and my vision of the monkey was of a show business monkey that just crashed and burned and went bad, sort of the - you know, sort of a Lindsay Lohan...
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HIAASEN: ...Of monkeys - and that he got fired from the set of the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" movie and found his way to this island.
DAVIES: Well, right. And you might as well just tell us a little bit more about this particular monkey, who goes by the name of Mr. Driggs, right?
HIAASEN: Driggs. Driggs is his name. And, you know, he's sort of got a sad story, but he makes his own problems, as most monkeys do. But here's what - you know, in every movie, it seems, you go to now and TV sitcoms and everywhere you look, there's sort of a gratuitous monkey - you know, "The Hangover" series. And I wanted a monkey with a backstory. I wanted a monkey...
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HIAASEN: ...Who's a complete character, who had a literary role in the book. So I just sort of imagined a history for this monkey who's - you know, who was managed, had managers in LA and got into the set in the Exuma Islands to do this movie. And then he does a couple of very bad things on the set of the movie, and he gets himself fired, and he ends up on this island.
DAVIES: Right. And the monkey wears diapers, we should mention.
HIAASEN: Well, yeah. And if you've ever owned a monkey, you know that's pretty important. They're not big on hygiene.
DAVIES: OK. OK.
HIAASEN: I had a monkey briefly myself. I can state that hygiene is not a top priority for the monkey kingdom.
DAVIES: Well, did you enjoy the monkey? How did it work out?
HIAASEN: It worked out badly, Dave. It worked out very badly. I was about - literally this is a true story. I was about - God - maybe 11 or 12 years old. And it was - I looked in the back of one of these outdoor magazines, and it said, pet monkey, $16.95, 16 dollars and 95 cents. I didn't tell my mother. I worked around the house. I got the money together, me and my little sister, and I sent off for this monkey without really telling her I was doing it. So one day, the UPS truck pulls up or some delivery truck, and this crate comes off, and there's this incredibly pissed-off monkey...
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HIAASEN: ...On it. And I took one look, and I knew. And she looked - my mom looked at me, and said, oh, I can't wait for your father to see this. And so I was afraid. No one really would go anywhere near the crate. That was the monkey's state of mind when he got there. My little brother, who was about 4 years old, said to me, hey. Can I pet the monkey? And being a bigger brother, I said, absolutely. Go ahead. Pet the monkey. And it just bit the hell out of my - I mean, it just gnawed, chawed on him for a long time. And so the monkey lasted about 48 hours, and then I don't know where it went.
DAVIES: Sad story. Another sad story...
HIAASEN: It was a sad story.
DAVIES: ...In South Florida.
HIAASEN: But in those days - the good news is you can't order them by mail anymore (laughter), so...
DAVIES: OK. OK. The name of the book is "Bad Monkey." It's written by our guest, Carl Hiaasen. We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. We're speaking with Carl Hiaasen, who's spent his life writing about and defending his native Florida from developers and outsiders who he sees as desecrating the state's natural treasures. Hiaasen has written several children's books and mystery novels set in Florida. His 2013 novel, "Bad Monkey," is now a TV series on Apple TV+ starring Vince Vaughn.
You grew up in the Fort Lauderdale area. Is that right?
HIAASEN: Yes, Dave. I was - I grew up in a suburb of Lauderdale out west called Plantation.
DAVIES: Right. What was your childhood like, in particular, you know, your relationship to the outdoor world of south Florida?
HIAASEN: Well, I mean, I was lucky enough to grow up before there was - were any, at least in our neighborhood, any strip malls or any development at all. And so every day, I'd get home from school and get on my bike, and I just ride really a mile or two out and be right on the edge of the Everglades. And it was the best childhood imaginable. You could, you know, fish and camp and do whatever you - you just were in the middle of nowhere in no time at all, and that's what I remember. I mean, there were no skate parks. I mean, there was nothing, and - but it was great. It was just an incredible childhood and probably one that exists in other parts of the country and maybe even still in other parts of Florida but certainly not there anymore. It's all concrete now.
DAVIES: So, you know, your journalistic career covers a period in which Florida has been - I don't want to use the term invaded, but, you know, it is a state that is, you know, certainly at times of year, so full of tourists and retirees. Have you sort of - have you reconciled yourself to outsiders and their role in the state?
HIAASEN: Well, I mean, you used the word invaded. I think it's too mild. I use the word trampled. Stampeded is what I usually use. Yeah. I mean, the population - since I was born in 1953, the population has more than quintupled in this state. And that - and try to imagine any place absorbing that kind of population change and the transformation that you would watch if you lived here. I mean, it's traumatic. And have I reconciled? I mean, sure. I have no illusions about - I mean, I've been writing for 40 years, trying to scare people out of this place, and I haven't done a very good job of it. I get letters from people all the time saying, I love your books. Please don't hate me, but I'm moving to Florida anyway.
DAVIES: You know, the other thing that I've always thought about Florida is that it must be so frustrating that when it's beautiful outside, the place can be overrun with people that you wish weren't there.
HIAASEN: (Laughter).
DAVIES: I mean, when I went to Delray Beach to visit my in-laws years ago, you couldn't get into the parking lot at the grocery store because there were all of these people.
HIAASEN: Oh, my God.
DAVIES: And then in the summer, when the population shrinks, it's, well, dreadfully hot, I would think. It's kind of a dilemma, isn't it?
HIAASEN: It is. It is hot. But, I mean, I grew up in that heat. I don't mind the heat at all. But you're right, there is this dichotomy, and it's beautiful. When you travel a little bit like I do, and you're up north in the cold and the rain and the sleet, you understand why people can't wait to get on a plane to come to Florida. I mean, I get it. Everybody understands it. But it's true. I know Delray. I know the parking lot experience. I know the grocery store experience. A friend of mine used to manage one of those big grocery stores, Publix. And he would come - he had the greatest stories about fist fights and brawls over the pickles.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HIAASEN: And the slip and falls were classic. This was back in the day, and they had to put up video cameras because they had old people who would come in on a regular basis and fall down on purpose and sue the store. And they knew who they were. So they started videotaping them as soon as they came in because they knew they were just looking for a place to pretend to fall, do a flop, you know, do a LeBron right there, you know, right in the front entrance of the store. And it was just classic Florida. Who else does this? You know, let's go to the grocery store and stage a lawsuit.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HIAASEN: Oh, great. Now, how about - and then we can pick up dinner while we're there.
DAVIES: (Laughter) One more character from the book I'd like to hear you describe - Evan Shook.
HIAASEN: Oh, yeah.
DAVIES: Our protagonist, Andrew Yancy, lives - what? - near the water. And he had this nice view of the sunset until this character Evan Shook comes in. Tell us about him.
HIAASEN: We've all had this, maybe not, but many of us in Florida have had this experience. Andrew Yancy is on his policeman's salary, now his roach inspector's salary, has got a modest little place on a beautiful island called Big Pine Key. It's actually a fairly big island in the chain of the keys on the way to Key West. And all he lives for is the sunset every day. You just sit on the deck, and you watch the sun go down over the Gulf of Mexico and tranquility ensues. And this guy buys this lot next to him and decides to build a spec house. He has no intention of living there himself, Evan Shook doesn't. But his idea is to build a gigantic house and sell it for a lot of money and finance his future separation from his wife.
And so the house starts going up. And of course, it's much larger, taller than the code, the building code in the Keys allows. This is no impediment to anyone resourceful enough in the Keys, to face that problem, because there's lots of buildings that are bigger when they're built than they were on paper. And so Yancy just fumes, and the house keeps getting bigger, his sunset keeps getting smaller. And he embarks on sort of a subtle commando campaign to discourage Evan Shook from fulfilling his dream.
DAVIES: Yeah, and there's some very funny stuff there. But again, there's the theme here, which is folks in Florida make money as they choose to. And, you know, regulation is kind of spotty.
HIAASEN: Yeah, well, in the keys, it's always been a little - it's been a little loose. But the point is that everybody there is there because they love the natural beauty of the place. And it may be just a little sliver of beauty. It may just be this view or that view. But then someone comes along who has no natural love for the Keys or for, you know, anything except making and dough, and he just throws up this monstrosity of a structure. And, you know, while most of us would just fantasize about sabotage, Yancy puts it into motion.
DAVIES: Right, in some very clever ways. I gather you must spend some time on the water.
HIAASEN: Yes. Every spare minute I can, I'm on the water. I mean, it's a very tranquil sort of thing. And it takes you back to a time when that was the principal, you know, way to get around, was by boat - or canoe, or dugout, or whatever it was - before there was I-95 and I-75 and the turnpike. I mean, the Seminole Indians traveled by water, and Ponce de Leon and everybody else who had ever tackled Florida. And the problem of conquering Florida was a problem of, you know, how do you get there and hold it?
And it's still a very peaceful thing. I mean, as I said, I go down to the Keys a lot. And I can get in my boat - I have a small skiff, but I can get back in the back country, in the places where you may not see another boat for a whole day, or if you do, it's just at a distance. And you're just out there, and there's dolphins, there's sawfish, there's turtles everywhere. And you're thinking, this must've been what it looked like when they first got here. And that's a pretty cool thing. That's not true everywhere. But it also gives you something to fight for. It's the reason that you don't give up despite all, you know, the madness and the insanity and the corruption, which is just, you know, multiplying with each new generation of arrivals.
DAVIES: Carl Hiaasen's novel "Bad Monkey" is now a TV series streaming on Apple TV+ starring Vince Vaughn. Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews Kate Atkinson's latest mystery, "Death At The Sign Of The Rook." And we remember jazz historian and archivist Dan Morgenstern. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF KENNY BARRON'S "SUNSET")
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. The British writer Kate Atkinson has won many literary awards, but she may be best known for her novels about private detective Jackson Brodie, whose exploits were adapted into the British TV series "Case Histories." Our critic-at-large John Powers is a big fan of these mysteries, and he's just read the latest one, "Death At The Sign Of The Rook." John says it draws on our memories of classic Country House Mysteries and then gives it an amusing twirl.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Like a great city, the mystery genre is home to many different communities. There are police procedurals, locked-room teasers, hard-boiled detective yarns and the soothing small-town cozies you find on Acorn TV. One of the merrier neighborhoods is that of the meta mystery - PBS' "Magpie Murders" series is a great example - whose creators don't simply tell a story. They lean into the artificiality of mysteries, highlighting and sometimes laying bare the gambits and tropes that keep us reading.
The latest arrival in this neighborhood is "Death At The Sign Of The Rook," the sunny sixth entry in Kate Atkinson's addictive series about Jackson Brodie, a sometimes saturnine private detective with a German shepherd's keen eye for abuse. Last time out, Brodie cracked a child molestation gang in a tale that recalled the real-life case of BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile, perhaps because that story was so grim, too nasty, really, for Atkinson's generous style. She's made this latest installment a lark. The book flirts with and tweaks golden-age mysteries like those of Agatha Christie.
The book begins with an invitation to a murder mystery weekend at Burton Makepeace House, a Downton Abbey-like stately home in Yorkshire. There, we're told guests will engage in what sounds like a live-action version of the game Clue, with actors playing all the parts. The invitation doesn't mention that the weekend is being offered because Burton Makepeace's owners, Lord and Lady Milton, are strapped for cash.
From the moment we read about a weekend devoted to solving a fake murder, we know that there will be a real one. We also know that Jackson Brodie will wind up there. The question is how. The answer starts with him being asked to find a painting stolen by the woman who'd been caring for his client's terminally ill mother. To track her down, he enlists the aid of Detective Constable Reggie Cross (ph). She'd investigated an earlier art theft at - where else? - Burton Makepeace.
Now, Atkinson loves a densely populated story. Even as Brodie and Reggie pursue leads, the book takes us inside the heads of three other key characters, who've all lost something big. Simon, a village reverend, has lost his faith. Ben, an army major, lost his leg in Afghanistan and, with it, his sense of purpose. And Lady Milton, whose thoughts are hilariously WASP-ish, has lost her privilege. We know that this trio will play a part in the murder mystery weekend.
The heart of the novel is, of course, Brodie, now in his 60s, grumpy about the changing world, but happy with his new Land Rover Destroyer (ph). As the victim of an abusive father, he's possessed of a strict code. You were allowed to hit men - sometimes it was wrong not to - but not women, children or dogs. Six novels in, it's clear that Atkinson treasures Brodie as an appealing fantasy, an ideal version of the flawed, all-to-human modern male, battered by experience, but filled with decency and curiosity and gruff charm.
Of course, Atkinson also writes prize-winning literary fiction. Her masterpiece is 2015's "A God In Ruins." Yet she feels no need to cordon off the Brodie novels from her so-called serious ones. Her mysteries brim with the same warm attention to vulnerable souls, the same nifty wit - she uses parentheticals like a guillotine - and the same fascination with the world around her.
Indeed, Atkinson uses this latest mystery to ruminate on scads of things - politics, television programs, art theft, the horrors of war, the decline of religion, violence against women and the workings of old-fashioned mystery novels with their bloodless plots. Hers is not a fiction of Zen astringency.
On the contrary, "Death At The Sign Of The Rook" strews loose ends all over the Yorkshire countryside. Have I mentioned that there's an escaped killer on the prowl or that a white-out blizzard is about to hit Burton Makepeace? Yet even as characters and events and ideas proliferate, Atkinson never loses sight of any of them. Her books always start out looking shaggy but wind up being anything but. By the time we reach the murder mystery weekend itself, all the book's loose ends get woven together. And even though this novel makes fun of the classic murder mystery with its baroque plots and too-neat solutions, Atkinson understands its delights. As everything clicks into place and the mystery is solved, we let out a satisfied ah.
DAVIES: John Powers reviewed "Death At The Sign Of The Rook" by Kate Atkinson. Coming up, we remember jazz historian, archivist and critic Dan Morgenstern. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. The revered jazz historian, archivist and critic Dan Morgenstern died earlier this month. He was 94. Morgenstern spent a lifetime as an enthusiastic advocate for jazz and for 35 years directed the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, building a collection of jazz recordings, memorabilia and writings that's the largest collection of its kind in the world. In his New York Times obituary, Barry Singer noted that Morgenstern was, quote, "one of the last jazz scholars to have known the giants of jazz he wrote about, both as friend and chronicler, a jazz writer uniquely embraced by jazz musicians, a nonmusician who captured their sounds in unpretentious prose, amplified with sweeping and encyclopedic historical context, " unquote.
In 2007, Morgenstern received the NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. Dan Morgenstern was born to Jewish parents in Munich in 1929. His father was the cultural correspondent for a German newspaper and had written critically of the Nazis. As the pressure mounted, his father escaped to France. Dan and his mother fled to Copenhagen, but when the Nazis reached the city, they were smuggled out of Denmark by the Danish resistance and found safety in Sweden. The family reunited in New York in 1947 after the war. When Terry Gross interviewed Dan Morgenstern - that was in 2004 - he told her about his introduction to jazz during the war. He was 8 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DAN MORGENSTERN: What got me - really got me involved was seeing Fats Waller in Copenhagen in September of 1938. And, you know, that was a great experience. I had never seen anybody like that before. Well, there wasn't anybody like Fats Waller, you know? There never has been since. But he was so - you know, so vital and so overpowering, in a way, you know, but he was physically very large. I had not seen many Black people in my life before then, and he was, as he would say, mesmerizing.
TERRY GROSS: Would you choose a record that you loved when you were young, during the war, when you were fleeing from the Nazis - a record that still means a lot to you?
MORGENSTERN: Well, I guess, you know, this is, of course, a kids' record, but it's also - in retrospect, it's a good jazz record. That was Chick Webb's "Dipsy Doodle," which featured a vocal by the then still very young - about 19-year-old - Ella Fitzgerald. And then, after the vocal, it had a tremendous trombone solo by Sandy Williams, whom I subsequently got to know after I came to this country. And that was just a record that I loved, and I particularly liked, you know, the nonsense lyrics. I knew some English, but not really a lot, but it has sort of silly lyrics, you know, and then that trombone solo afterwards. So, you know, that's a record that I'm still very fond of.
GROSS: Why don't we hear it?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE DIPSY DOODLE")
ELLA FITZGERALD: (Singing) The Dipsy Doodle is easy to find. It's almost always in the back of your mind. You never know it until it's too late. And then you're in such a terrible state. Like, the moon jumped over the cow, hey diddle - that's the way the Dipsy Doodle works. When you think that you're crazy, you're the victim of the Dipsy Doodle. But it's not your mind that's hazy. It's your tongue that's at fault, not your noodle. (Scatting) Dip, dip, dip, dip, Dipsy Doodle. You think you're crazy, the things that you say, like, rhythm got I and hot am I. That's the way the Dipsy Doodle works.
GROSS: That's Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald, "The Dipsy Doodle," a record that meant a lot to Dan Morgenstern when he was growing up. In 1947, after the war, you and your mother moved to New York, where your father had already moved. What are some of your earliest memories of discovering jazz as a New Yorker and actually being able to, say, like, go to concerts and go to record stores?
MORGENSTERN: Well, I have this line that I've used a lot. I used it in my very subliminal appearance on Ken Burns' "Jazz," which I had the pleasure of...
(LAUGHTER)
MORGENSTERN: I was an adviser to that, but on screen, I only appeared for about 10 seconds. But what I said is something that I've often said, which is that when I came to New York, you know, what I wanted was not to see the Empire State Building, but I wanted to see 52nd Street. 52nd Street, after all, was alive at night, you know? And I was still only 17. But I managed to get there, and to me, it was - you know, it was paradise. I mean, you could - one side of the street, you could hear Sidney Bechet, and across the street, you could hear Charlie Parker, and Billie Holiday was next door. You know, I mean, it was just an incredible place.
GROSS: You've described yourself as having been more of a jazz journalist and jazz proselytizer than jazz critic. Would you choose a record that you feel you helped affect the destiny of, or helped change the attitude toward - a record that you loved that you thought wasn't really - wasn't getting adequate attention or wasn't really understood?
MORGENSTERN: Well, one of the things that I found irksome was the attitude that then existed towards the work of Louis Armstrong. People had a tendency to look at it in terms of the Hot Five era - you know, "Heebie Jeebies" - and then jump to the All-Stars and "Hello, Dolly!" And everything in between was sort of being ignored. And to me, and others, as well, that was, you know, some of the peak achievements of Mr. Armstrong. So in particular, I had a chance to do liner notes for a collection of wonderful material from the mid-'30s that had more or less been neglected.
In particular, one thing that was on there was a piece by Armstrong himself called "Swing That Music," which is just a wonderful demonstration of his awesome trumpet prowess, and also kind of reminded me - and the way he punches out 42 high C's, you know, after the vocal reminded me of the way Joe Louis punched out Max Schmeling. And I was able to bring that into better focus and kind of illuminate that aspect of Armstrong's artistry, and I'm happy about that.
GROSS: Why don't we hear that Armstrong recording of "Swing That Music"? And this is from 1936?
MORGENSTERN: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING THAT MUSIC")
LOUIS ARMSTRONG: (Singing) And my heart gives a chill. I feel such a thrill. My feet won't keep still when they swing that music. Rhythm like that puts me in a trance. Oh, you can't blame me for wanting to dance. From what I understand, it must be just grand to play in a band when they swing that music. I'm just happy as can be when they swing that music for me.
GROSS: My guest is Dan Morgenstern. Since 1976, you've directed the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. And in that sense, you've become really important as a collector of jazz history. I mean, the institute is - I don't know - perhaps the most important collection of jazz history in the country, one of the most important in the world. What are one or two of the objects in the collection of the Institute of Jazz Studies that mean the most to you and that have an almost, like, magical aura surrounding them?
MORGENSTERN: Well, I think that would be the instruments. We have quite a collection of instruments that belong to famous and maybe even not-so-famous musicians, and some of those people are people that I felt very close to. So those things represent a very tangible, you know, aspect of my own life with this music, such as, you know, Ben Webster's tenor, Lester Young's tenor, the one he used when he was with Basie. And we have odd things like plastic gardenia of Billie Holiday's. When she couldn't get a real one, you know, she used that. And Billie was somebody that I just absolutely loved.
And then manuscript - we have a wonderful manuscript by Louis Armstrong. And we have - oh, I don't know if I can use the expression tchotchkes, but we have things like - we have an Ella Fitzgerald - a little sculpture made of spoons and forks which actually represents her, you know, with a microphone in her hand. And that was sitting on her mantelpiece. She really liked that. And those things are special. You know, they have an aura.
GROSS: Well, Dan Morgenstern, thank you so much for talking with us.
MORGENSTERN: It's been a great pleasure, and thank you for having me.
DAVIES: Terry Gross spoke with Dan Morgenstern in 2004. The revered Jazz historian, author and archivist died earlier this month on September 7. He was 94 years old. Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews HBO's "The Penguin," the latest spin-off of the Batman series. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET'S "UNSQUARE DANCE")
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. In 2022, writer-director Matt Reeves presented "The Batman," the latest movie incarnation of the popular DC Comics costumed hero. Robert Pattinson starred in the title role, and the villains he faced included a drug kingpin named Carmine Falcone as well as reimagined versions of The Riddler and The Penguin. Colin Farrell, who played The Penguin in that movie, now reprises the role in a new eight-part HBO spin-off series called "The Penguin." Our TV critic David Bianculli found it surprisingly dark and even more surprisingly engrossing. Here's his review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: In every TV or movie version of the Batman story, from the campy 1960s series to the recent increasingly somber "Dark Knight" films, the villains always have been more colorful and arguably more interesting than their heroic adversary. Modern DC comics movies have tried to address that imbalance by focusing on the psychological demons driving wealthy orphan Bruce Wayne to become a costumed crime fighter. And it's worked. But as proven by the recent and upcoming spin-off movies headlining The Joker, that same psychological deconstruction approach works even better when applied to the villains.
So here comes The Penguin. When Burgess Meredith played him on TV's "Batman" series, he was a waddling, quacking, cartoonish character in a tuxedo. When Danny DeVito played him in Tim Burton's movie "Batman Returns," he was still cartoonish but more menacing. And the way Colin Farrell played him in the recent movie "The Batman," almost unrecognizably buried under prosthetics and a body suit, The Penguin was brash and vicious but all too human. In this new HBO spin-off, the human element is everything. Lauren LeFranc from ABC's "Agents Of Shield" is the showrunner, and Craig Zobel of "Mare Of Easttown" directs the first three episodes.
The action in their sequel takes place just a week after the events in the "Batman" movie. With Carmine Falcone dead, the battle is on to fill the void at the top of Gotham City's evil underworld. Falcone's former lieutenant, Oswald Cobb, is one of the people eyeing the vacant throne. But there are others. One is Falcone's surviving son, Alberto, who makes fun of Oswald's girth and hobbled walk by calling him the penguin. There's also Falcone's daughter, Sofia, who has been tucked away for years at Arkham Asylum but is about to get out.
The series called "The Penguin," then, boils down to a story about a power struggle among mobsters. With no costumes, no superpowers and no Batman, the eight episodes of "The Penguin" are less like a comic book series than a crime drama - closer to "The Sopranos" than to the Batman movie from which it came. It's even darker, with a sometimes shocking amount of R-rated language and violence. And like "The Sopranos," the twisted relationship between the central character and his mother is the key to everything. Early in "The Penguin," Oswald, played by Colin Farrell, commits an impulsive murder and runs to his mother to protect and relocate her. The mother, powerfully played by Deirdre O'Connell, isn't exactly pleased.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PENGUIN")
COLIN FARRELL: (As Oz) Ma, here's your water. Take these two peels, and then we got to go, OK? There you go, OK?
DEIRDRE O'CONNELL: (As Francis) Will you tell me first what I did to lose your respect?
FARRELL: (As Oz) What are you talking about?
O'CONNELL: (As Francis) You come in here, you're trying to buy me off with a necklace, some [expletive] about an urgent special occasion.
FARRELL: (As Oz) Ma.
O'CONNELL: (As Francis) Did I raise my sons to lie to me? Did I?
FARRELL: (As Oz) No.
O'CONNELL: (As Francis) [Expletive] then. What did you do? What did you do? Come on. What did you do?
FARRELL: (As Oz) I...
O'CONNELL: (As Francis) What did you do?
FARRELL: (As Oz) I shot Alberto Falcone. He's dead. It ain't safe for you here. You understand? Sofia Falcone is out of Arkham, and she knows. If she don't, she will.
BIANCULLI: He's right about Sofia. Sofia, played by Cristin Milioti, is the real shocking surprise of this series. To this point, Milioti has specialized in playing likable, resourceful, independent women in such shows as the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" - she played the mother - and the brilliant "USS Callister" episode of "Black Mirror". She starred on Broadway in the musical "Once" and costarred in the second season of the FX series "Fargo." But she's never played a character remotely like Sofia, and she's simply outstanding. Her character, like Oswald's, is dissected intensely and intelligently in flashbacks. And her evolution, like his, charts the slow but steady path into becoming not just a mobster, but a monster. After exiting the insane asylum, she has her men capture Oswald, tie him to a chair and torture him while she watches and talks to him.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PENGUIN")
CRISTIN MILIOTI: (As Sofia) You are so good at talking your way out of things, even at the cost of someone else's life - especially then, right?
FARRELL: (As Oz) What are you doing?
MILIOTI: (As Sofia) But my father isn't around anymore to reward you with fancy suits and stupid cars...
FARRELL: (As Oz) Sofia
MILIOTI: (As Sofia) And a club that he lets you believe is yours.
FARRELL: (As Oz) Sofia - (screaming).
MILIOTI: (As Sofia) It's just you and me now, OK? So I want you to think - I want you to really think - am I crazy? Is it all in my head?
FARRELL: (As Oz, screaming).
MILIOTI: (As Sofia) Tell me.
FARRELL: (As Oz, screaming).
MILIOTI: (As Sofia) Tell me that I'm too emotional, and that I have an overactive imagination and that I shouldn't take things so personally.
BIANCULLI: Milioti as Sofia has an unusually rich character arc. She's "Breaking Bad" at warp speed. Meanwhile, Colin Farrell inhabits the Penguin so thoroughly and compellingly that you'll actually forget it's Colin Farrell under all that makeup, at least I did. And I actually cared about these characters and believed them, a level of involvement I don't get with most DC comics adaptations and didn't expect here. On the lighter side of the Batman canon, I still love the TV and Tim Burton versions. But on the dark side, "The Penguin" is the best entry yet.
DAVIES: David Bianculli reviewed "The Penguin" on HBO and streaming on Max.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEASTIE BOYS' "MULTILATERAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT")
DAVIES: On Monday's show, we'll speak with Todd Phillips, who directed and cowrote the film "Joker," starring Joaquin Phoenix, and the new sequel with Lady Gaga playing Harley Quinn. The characters are very loosely based on the Batman stories, but it's a dark story about trauma and mental illness. It's also a musical, in which Gaga and Phoenix both sing. I hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEASTIE BOYS' "MULTILATERAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT")
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