Virtual Memories Show 629:
Elon Green
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“The Wikipedia entry was so interesting that I assumed there were already two or three books written about the case, and I was frankly shocked that nobody had gone back in the intervening 40 years to revisit it.”
With THE MAN NOBODY KILLED: Life, Death, and Art In Michael Stewart’s New York (Celadon Books), author Elon Green brings us an investigation into a terrible episode of police brutality and its aftermath in mid-’80s NYC. We talk about what drew him to the story of Michael Stewart, a 25-year-old black artist-model-DJ who died at the hands of transit police in 1983, his amazement that no one else had written this book, and how his early assumptions about a coverup gave way to a different coverup. We get into how he so wonderfully evokes the gritty NYC of that era, spreading out a canvas that takes in the arts scene — think Haring, Basquiat, Madonna — and the awful crimes and police behavior — think Bumpurs, Goetz — of that era. We discuss the art of interviewing people 40+ years after an event without reopening old wounds, the judge on the case who talked with him for 3 hours and shared how his conclusions on the verdict changed, what he sees in Stewart’s art, how he tries to build the entire environment of the world he’s writing about in his books, why he considers himself a history writer (& despises the “true crime” label & genre), why being a good journalist means having a sense of decency, bringing his first book to life as an HBO series, and more. Give it a listen! And go read THE MAN NOBODY KILLED!
“When I began the story, I assumed the idea of a coverup in the chief medical examiner’s office was true. . . . That didn’t turn out to be real. Everything he did was explicable, with reasoning to it.”
“You always have to be careful about who you’re quoting, and with Murray Kempton, the only danger is wanting to quote too much.”
“The challenge of being an outsider writing about a community is that you have to do far, far more work and it has to be immersive.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!
About our Guest
Elon Green has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Columbia Journalism Review, and appears in Unspeakable Acts, Sarah Weinman’s anthology of true crime. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York was his first book and won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. He was an executive producer on the HBO series adapted from Last Call. His new book is The Man Nobody Killed.
Follow Elon on Bluesky and Instagram.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Elon Musk by Natalie Sparaccio. Not sure who the Michael Stewart photo is by. It’s on my instagram.