Mark Harris

But if you find yourself having them say or do something that is the opposite of what they would have said or done, because you think that makes the story better, then yeah, I think you're cheating.

And I think you're doing a disservice to those people, and to history, and even to your own storytelling.

These were people that

plenty of people actually knew and interacted and worked with and befriended and loved.

So I think doing historical fiction about contemporary people is a really, really...

Right.

And again, not having seen the show, I will say I found her argument against that kind of use very, very compelling and convincing.

Yeah.

I think a lot of myself seeps into the work.

I mean, in the Mike Nichols book, I never use first person.

And the only occasion where I could have used first person was when I write about him making the HBO version of Angels in America because that was written by my husband and I witnessed a lot of it and I could have interjected myself.

In

In the new book that I'm working on, which is a history of popular culture as relates to the gay rights movement, there are a few occasions, even though it's a history book, where I do go into first person.

Because I think it's...

It's really important for readers to know that I'm a white cis gay man.

It's really important to them to know when I was born and where I lived and what I experienced, even though this is not in any way an autobiography or a memoir, because I think it would be more misleading in a way for me to

pretend that I was writing a completely objective, God's eye view of this whole subject than for me to say to people, look, this is coming from a particular perspective.

And here's what you have the right to know about me and the perspective that I developed.

You should know if you're going to read a big, long book, you should know who's talking to you.

And I think in a podcast like the one you're doing, where