Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat,

Gabby Gruen: Criticism can be a real help. Not always, but if it’s helpful criticism, who says it, what they say, and where I like to take that criticism.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind. Storybeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discuss discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Gabby Gruen, is joining me for the second time on Story Beat. Gabby has been a writer and producer of ads and commercials for several top tier ad agencies and their high profile CL. As a screenwriter, Gabby’s sold work to Fox 2000 Films and wrote movie scripts on assignment for a number of independent production companies. More recently, he’s been publishing novels. We chatted about his excellent first book, the a Holocaust Thriller. During his first time on this show. I found the uniform to be an intense page turner with real heart and wit. Gabby’s next book, the Ride of a Lifetime, a crime novel, is set on the frozen streets of Detroit by. I’ve read the Ride of a Lifetime and can tell you it’s a gritty trip through the criminal underbelly of the Motor City. If you like urban noir thrillers, I’m certain you’ll enjoy the Ride of a Lifetime. For more about Gabby and his writing, please go to ggruen.com and now it’s a great pleasure to have Gabby Gruen join me today for the second time on Story Beat. Gabby, welcome back to the show.

Gabby Gruen: Hi, Steve. Thank you.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s a great pleasure to see you. You know, it appears you’ve been very busy since we last spoke. How many books do you currently have in the work?

Gabby Gruen: So I am working on a third novel. I actually had to, uh, stop for a while because I spilled a cappuccino on my keyboard and lost my third novel.

Steve Cuden: You lost the novel?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, I made the mistake of, um, trading in my laptop so I could get a Costco discount and, uh, didn’t realize that if you don’t have the hard drive, the, uh, files are totally gone.

Steve Cuden: Oh, my goodness.

Gabby Gruen: So I had to start fresh and I needed to because the third story is, uh, a tribute to my mother about her Holocaust survival.

Steve Cuden: Did you find it to be helpful that you had to start over then?

Gabby Gruen: Uh, a little bit. A little bit. Because I had the outline in my head and, uh, I’m not sure how to put this, but there’s something about approaching a work for multiple times that sort of fills in stuff for you.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, you’re. You’re dredging up things you didn’t think about during the first pass, which is why rewriting is so valuable.

Gabby Gruen: That’s right.

Steve Cuden: Uh, and. And so the. I find it frustrating because sometimes I think that I’ve done really good work on that first pass. But always the first passes is never good for me. It’s. It’s the multiple extra passes that make things better.

Gabby Gruen: Yes. So you’re giving it a second look. You’re able to see where it needs help.

Steve Cuden: Exactly. So, you know, you spent years in the advertising industry. We talked about that a bit in the last show. Uh, that we did. Um, I’m just wondering if you think that your years in advertising has had an influence over the way that you think about telling stories and the way that you create, whether it’s a screenplay or a novel. Do you think that your work in the advertising industry was useful to you in doing this work now?

Gabby Gruen: I do, um, for a couple reasons. One is that in the advertising business, every, every assignment you get offers you a problem, so you’re there to solve that problem. And, uh, and so that’s a helpful way to think about things. You know, especially if you’re writing, uh, a screenplay or novel, you can say to yourself, what do I want to happen here? What was wrong with my first draft? Where can I bump this up?

Steve Cuden: And so you’re always solving problems in storytelling. If you’re writing anything decent at all, it’s full of problems.

Gabby Gruen: Always.

Steve Cuden: Yes. I mean, that’s just the constant. So anybody that’s listening to this out there, know that if you think you’re having problems with your story, then you’re a writer, because that’s what it is.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. It’s great to pose that for yourself, you know, as a. As a big problem.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that all of your years of writing combined. Because you’ve been at this for a number of years now, uh, including the ad agencies. Ah. And, uh, working on screenplays and novels. Do you think that you’ve gotten better as a writer over time? In what ways?

Gabby Gruen: Well, I can look at it from several different angles now. I mean, I’m not just struggling to. To come up with a plot. I think about things in terms of plot, in terms of theme, in terms of story, and in terms of character. You know, I was just looking at, um, the novel we’re going to talk about today.

Steve Cuden: Ride of a Lifetime.

Gabby Gruen: The ride of a lifetime. And the thing that I was really happy about is looking at the narrator, how the narrator tells the story. And it’s so entertaining to me. He’s like a voice of the characters.

Steve Cuden: Well, yes, we’re going to talk more about Ride of a Lifetime shortly. I want to talk to you first about some of your process and how you go through things. I know in our first time together you mentioned that you started out early as a gag writer for comedians like Willie Tyler and Lester. Um, do you think that writing gags and jokes and writing for stand up comedians and that kind of work is helpful to the way that you think about writing sentences? In other words, uh, when you tell a joke, typically you want to be clear, concise and to the point. Do you think that that has helped you in terms of forming the way that you write now?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, because it is in its way its own problem. So you approach it, uh, that way that you have to solve the problem. It puts a limit on your thought process.

Steve Cuden: And jokes share a similar, or correct me if I’m wrong, a similar construction to short advertisement, don’t they? Where you have to get in, get out in a very short period of time.

Gabby Gruen: Yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s the most difficult form of writing of all, is writing short. Whether it’s a concise line, a joke, whether it’s uh, an Advertisement For a 30 second ad, I think those are probably incredibly difficult to get right.

Gabby Gruen: There’s a wonderful, uh, South American writer. His name escapes me, uh, escapes, uh, me now. But he wrote, uh, a letter to a friend about his last letter. He said, I apologize because I didn’t have time to shorten it.

Steve Cuden: That, that’s. That story is sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Did you know that?

Gabby Gruen: Oh, really?

Steve Cuden: Yeah, yeah. In fact, I think it’s mentioned that way. And maybe it was. Maybe they just made it up. But I’m pretty sure they told that or they went through that in the movie Lincoln, the Spielberg movie Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yeah, I think it was Jorge something. I think he’s an Argentinian writer known for his short story, Jorge Luis Borges. That’s it. Borges.

Steve Cuden: Yes, yes, I’m sure I’m pronouncing it wrong and I apologize for that. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I’m sure he probably picked up on that and he said it too. It’s a really great way to think. Uh, it’s easy to write and overwrite. It’s harder to be concise.

Gabby Gruen: Yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: Aside from the differences in formatting between writing a script, which has a specific mechanical format, versus writing prose, which you’ve done a bunch of lately. What would you say are the biggest differences between creating a story for a novel versus a story for a screenplay?

Gabby Gruen: Well, a story for a screenplay has to have, uh, a good deal more, uh, description. It creates, uh, uh, the world.

Steve Cuden: The screenplay needs more description. Or a novel needs more description.

Gabby Gruen: There’s more physical description in a novel, definitely, because you’re also telling, uh, the interior story of the characters.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s right. And you have to describe the scenery, the background, the cost, the way people are dressed and the way they move. You have to describe that more in detail in a novel.

Gabby Gruen: Absolutely.

Steve Cuden: And do you find that more daunting or more fun?

Gabby Gruen: It depends. You know, in this one, in the, uh, ride of a lifetime, it was a bit more fun. Sometimes it’s a bit daunting, though, because you’re wondering if you created enough of a world. So. And that’s sort of, uh, one of the things I’m dealing with right now in my third novel.

Steve Cuden: I think in your first two, you had no trouble doing that. I think they’re both very rich in what you’re reading. You’re getting a good image in your head as to what it is I think you’re trying to say.

Gabby Gruen: Well, thank you, both of you, for saying that.

Steve Cuden: Well, I enjoyed reading both of your books. They’re both easy to read, they’re fun, they’re smart, they’re full of action. And, uh, uh, I enjoyed them both thoroughly. Um, as you’ve turned to writing novels, have you, more or less, at this point, given up on your Hollywood dreams, or are you still thinking about that?

Gabby Gruen: You know, I would, uh. I think about it, and I would pursue it if I thought it was realistic. But from what I hear about the business, unless you’re pretty seriously connected, it’s hard to get, uh, any kind of attention for myself in the. In that business.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s been hard for a really long time, but now it’s particularly hard.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, I look online. There are websites, uh, that are aimed at screenwriters, and, uh, all of them seem to be begging for money. So that they’ll take money and connect you with a. An agent or a, uh, development person.

Steve Cuden: Okay, so let’s talk about that for a second. I think it’s really important that you brought it up. Doesn’t get mentioned on this show too often, but the truth is, anybody that wants to take your money to connect you in Hollywood, run away from the only people that should ever take your money are agents or managers. After you’ve been paid.

Gabby Gruen: Yes.

Steve Cuden: Never upfront. Never ever, ever upfront.

Gabby Gruen: And, you know, in. In that world that I was just describing, you’re supposed to be approaching a, um, a manager who just has a little bit of experience. Experience as a development person. And so how do you know their bona fides are really real or worth taking serious?

Steve Cuden: Well, sometimes it’s helpful if you can look around on the Internet for them. Today, when I was first starting in the business 180 years ago, there, uh, was no Internet. So you really were taking a chance. I, um, think that it’s okay to pay someone who is a, uh, known entity who can give you feedback, like a coach. That’s okay. But that person’s not in the business of connecting you into Hollywood. Anybody that says, give me your money and I’ll get you to whoever. To a producer, director, a manager, an agent, whatever, run away from that person. They’re just taking your money.

Gabby Gruen: Good advice.

Steve Cuden: I believe it is good advice. So you seem to gravitate toward, in at least the two books I’ve read, toward action stories, thrillers. They’re both thrillers. Very different genres of storytelling, but they’re both thrillers. Where does your passion for those kinds of stories come from?

Gabby Gruen: You know, just as an audience member, that’s the kind of story I like.

Steve Cuden: What is it about them that you like? What is it you like about them?

Gabby Gruen: There is a sense of risk there. There are. There are real physical stakes. And I don’t know whether I mentioned this to you the last time we spoke, but the French thrillers of the 1950s, that are sort of like clockwork, uh, capers really appealed to me.

Steve Cuden: When you say clockwork, you’re talking about they have a certain ticking clock in them.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, I did. I did. You know, in fact, I, uh, wouldn’t have thought it was possible. In the Uniform, my first book, I used a lot of that thriller convention. You know, he’s trying to put together this plan to escape a barn, and

Steve Cuden: he’s trying not to get killed.

Gabby Gruen: Yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: And so, yeah, anytime you can add that kind of pressure, especially in a screenplay, I think that that’s usually, uh, a pretty good thing. It’s not true for every story, but most stories can use that extra pressure of time.

Gabby Gruen: Yes. Yeah. In fact, you know, uh, the Apollo 13 movie.

Steve Cuden: Yes, sure.

Gabby Gruen: Had one of those sequences that I. And I just loved it for that.

Steve Cuden: Well, talk about almost, um, dying. That’s really up against that you’re out in space and there’s no one really to help you other than what you can get from the people at NASA. Yeah. That was a thriller based on a true story, which I think was. Was. Was wonderfully done. Um, so what kind of thriller stories, what kind of thriller writers or movies or books do you read that give you inspiration? Who do you admire?

Gabby Gruen: You know, these days I don’t have time to read. Uh, you know, if I want to read, I’ll get an audiobook.

Steve Cuden: Well, okay, but you’re still get your. Even if it’s an audiobook, you’re at least hearing the story.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yes, yes.

Steve Cuden: So what kind of. What kind of books do you read or listen to?

Gabby Gruen: Well, you know, I have my friend Haris Orkin.

Steve Cuden: Yes. Who’s been on the show.

Gabby Gruen: The spy humor novelist.

Steve Cuden: Fantastic.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah, he’s great. Ah, Fun to read. And that’s. I’m, um, not sure I haven’t read much lately because I’ve been so invested in developing this third novel.

Steve Cuden: So when you go to movies or watch movies on TV or pull a DVD out, what. What do you tend to watch?

Gabby Gruen: Actually, the most recent book that I, uh, read, now that you remind me, was, uh, uh. Hail Mary.

Steve Cuden: Hail Mary, which became the movie.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. And it was, uh, a great. Uh. To me it was a thriller. To me it was a thriller. And, uh, you have a man who doesn’t even know where he is. He has no. He has no access to tools and knowledge and that sort of thing until he begins to figure out where he is.

Steve Cuden: Well. So, okay, so what for you then? Makes a good story?

Gabby Gruen: Good.

Steve Cuden: What to you, when you are watching a movie or you’re reading a book, what is it that keeps drawing you in?

Gabby Gruen: A real problem. So in the case of, uh, actually, uh, both of Andy Weir’s movies and books, uh, he presents a lone character with a very difficult problem. In the Martian, you got a guy there who’s left on Mars without any of his port people. And it’s all told, uh, very wittily, by the way, uh, he say he’s a narrator himself and the same thing, uh, in Hail Mary Project. Hail Mary. And, uh, it’s sort of, and it’s to me, a unique way of telling a story. And I like it for that.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that stories are there to help us understand our world better?

Gabby Gruen: I’m not sure if that’s the case for all writers, but occasionally it is. I don’t know that I sit down and say, I’m going to help uh, the world. Understand, those are.

Steve Cuden: Those are two different things, Gabby. Um, uh, one is whether when we tell a story, whether we’re intending to raise the world in some way, or whether by writing, we do it even if we’re not trying to.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, in that case, now that you mentioned, uh, I think that really is the intention.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s what I was trying to get from you, which I think you agree with.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. You’re characterizing the world. You’re creating a vessel of understanding for readers and for viewers.

Steve Cuden: That’s right. And by developing characters, it helps us to understand ourselves. If you’re a good writer and you’re an observant writer and you develop characters that are realistic, um, and that you put them in the cauldron of a difficult story, sometimes it helps us understand our own world.

Gabby Gruen: It’s true. It’s true. When you started that question, I wasn’t sure that I was in that category of writers.

Steve Cuden: I think you are. And I think Ride, uh, of a Lifetime does that as well. Uh, so let’s go through a bit of your writing process. When you’re starting a new story, like when you’re working on a new one now, but when you were doing Ride of a Lifetime or, um, the Uniform, uh, what do you usually do? Do you sit down and work on character first or plot? What do you tend to look at first?

Gabby Gruen: I think I do plot first, plot. And, um, it depends on who my characters are. In the beginning, I mean, I knew in the uniform that the main character was a labor camp prisoner. Sort of steered me in a certain direction.

Steve Cuden: And a doc and a doctor.

Gabby Gruen: And a doctor. And who was he up against? That sort of thing. And as the story unfolded, um, uh, made things more interesting for me. I mean, the connection to a horse,

Steve Cuden: the horse, is very important in that story.

Gabby Gruen: Very, very.

Steve Cuden: As you’re writing, as you’re conjuring up your. Your tales and your. Your characters, are you thinking about the audience and how they’ll receive it, or are you only writing to please yourself?

Gabby Gruen: I think to myself, I mean, I would like to. I would like to know that I was connecting with an audience. I. I think maybe I wasn’t worried about it that much in the uniform, but I think maybe in the Ride of a Lifetime, it’s a little bit more intentional because it’s a more modern story. And I’m curious how a story like that, that’s so conversational and so profane, how that’s going to land with people.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s a modern noir. It harks back to a lot of great thriller detective writers, basically crime writers. Really?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Um, do you have a particular methodology that you use for developing your characters? Do you sit down and do studies on them or how do you come up with the characters you do?

Gabby Gruen: I don’t, but when I, after I create a character then I’ll go a little bit deeper. For instance in the Ride of a Lifetime, knowing that my main character is uh, this sort of part time gangster, I sort of leaned on people that I knew growing up who were sort of like troubled spirits.

Steve Cuden: You knew gangsters as you were growing up?

Gabby Gruen: I knew people that would uh, grow up to become gangsters.

Steve Cuden: Really?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah. People who would just for fun, start fights.

Steve Cuden: Just for fun?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. In fact I think, I think how is it there at the receiving end of some of them,

Steve Cuden: uh. You had fights picked with you?

Gabby Gruen: Yes, I had. I wasn’t ready for it. But you know, I’ve had people come up to me on the street and just punch me out.

Steve Cuden: Really?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: With no provocation at all?

Gabby Gruen: None.

Steve Cuden: Well, I guess I can happily say that’s Knockwood. Never happened to me.

Gabby Gruen: Um, that’s Detroit for you.

Steve Cuden: I guess that is.

Gabby Gruen: There were scary people there.

Steve Cuden: And is that where most of the inspiration for the characters in the Ride of a Lifetime come from?

Gabby Gruen: I think so.

Steve Cuden: Are any of them based on people you knew? You don’t have to name names. I’m just wondering if any of them are based on people you knew.

Gabby Gruen: I think Billy Pearl is based on people that I knew. I tweaked him a little bit to modernize, I mean to make him a little bit more acceptable. You know, I. There.

Steve Cuden: In what way? How did you tweak him?

Gabby Gruen: Well, I uh, made him a veteran of the Israeli uh, army. You know, the kind of. The people I, I knew growing up were not likely to do that sort of thing.

Steve Cuden: Let’s tell the listeners what Ride of a Lifetime is about. What? Tell, tell us what the story is.

Gabby Gruen: It’s about a part uh, time gangster in Detroit who used uh, to be a, a Windows, I don’t know what you call it. Windows accessory salesman. And uh, he and his boss is a, is a sort of criminal entrepreneur. And uh, the boss assigns him a job of watching one of his own workers. And uh, and character’s uh, name is Billy Pearl. And he starts watching the guy and ends up getting drawn into the target’s life. And uh, so that uh, he’s not totally in control of things. He is uh, and gets involved in the. In uh, the guys. Oh, so the target is a mechanic, and the mechanic is there to fix, uh, his gto.

Steve Cuden: So. So you’re talking about a car mechanic, not a mechanic in the sense of somebody who’s an assassin.

Gabby Gruen: Yes, yes, a car mechanic. And, um, he makes the GTO sort of, uh, a character, a unique character in the story. Sort of the way the horse was. I mean, I hadn’t really seen the parallels before, but, uh, you know, this is a guy, Billy Pearl, who never had a pot to piss in. And all of a sudden he has something that is worth, uh, a great deal to a lot of people.

Steve Cuden: What kind of a car is. It’s a GTO, right?

Gabby Gruen: It’s a 1970 GTO. The judge.

Steve Cuden: The Judge.

Gabby Gruen: A very high performance car. And, uh, there’s a fair amount of narration in the story about what that means.

Steve Cuden: Yes, there is. And is. And it’s canary yellow, if I remember correct.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah, it is.

Steve Cuden: And, uh, and the car itself goes through a whole bunch of stuff throughout the story.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, it does, yeah. It starts out as a rusted old clunker, and it becomes a valuable collectible. And that makes Billy a target.

Steve Cuden: Yes, it does. And. And he’s. He’s a character. I mean, he’s a really well developed character. And clearly I think you could translate him to the screen quite easily. Uh, we’ve seen lots of movies in this genre, but not with this unique take. And, uh, I’m just curious. There have been hundreds or thousands of crime stories written and produced, and I’m just wondering why you decided you wanted to write this one.

Gabby Gruen: First of all, it’s a Detroit story. And I was. I grew up in Detroit where the. The cold was a constant presence. And it was a, uh, challenge to get through every day. And I thought that it was a kind of a. A, uh, fun way to. To show the. The car managing, just getting around on the streets and getting Billy from place to place.

Steve Cuden: And the people walking down the street, they’re all slipping and sliding every which way.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: I mean, that’s. I. I’m in Pittsburgh and we get our harsh winters. I think yours are probably a little harsher in Detroit a little bit. But nevertheless, that we run into the same problems where there’s ice on the roads and snow and it’s cold. So when you were developing this, what did you spend most of your time on in developing it? Uh, I know you say you’d like to write plot first, but did you wind up spending a lot of time developing the characters and the Action as well.

Gabby Gruen: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Because I mean there were a bunch of really interesting challenging characters. I mean in addition to Billy, there’s his foil, the mechanic Lenny and Lenny’s wife who is like a, a former affair uh, of Billy.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

Gabby Gruen: There’s Billy’s comedian girlfriend and they all present Billy with the really interesting moral challenges as well.

Steve Cuden: In what way? What kind of moral challenges?

Gabby Gruen: So Lenny’s wife Billy has to decide whether he wants to engage with her sexually. There’s Sandy the comedian who is after Billy to have him finance her career and move, and move her to L. A.

Steve Cuden: She, she turns him into her manager.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Which is actually hilarious that you’ve got a part time criminal turns into a comedian’s uh, manager and there’s all that,

Gabby Gruen: just the, the question of personal loyalty, you know. Is he going to uh, is he going to have a sexual affair with Sandy the comedian? Because it starts out not that way. In fact he, he thinks she’s a lesbian and he says, and you know, she says something that, that he, he annoyed her with and she uh, mentions it and he says how do I know what lesbians find funny? You know, that sort of thing. You know, he didn’t mean to offend her but just in the course of having a conversation, uh, that stuff comes out.

Steve Cuden: He is a, he’s a great uh, sexually attractive character. He is attractive to women uh, in the story and he’s very sort of, I would say laissez faire about it. He just goes with the flow a lot. And I uh, think that that’s what makes him kind of cool and, and very interesting at the same time because he’s, he’s a player.

Gabby Gruen: I mean he doesn’t intend to be, but things sort of come uh, to him.

Steve Cuden: I don’t think he thinks about it. He’s just living life.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And he’s a natural addict.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, he is. Yes.

Steve Cuden: So this story is filled from beginning to end with non stop conflict. He’s in conflict all the time. There’s always something going on that makes his life difficult. Are you conscious as you’re writing and developing story to infuse conflict that much into it?

Gabby Gruen: I do try, you know, as I was. It depends on what stage of writing this that you’re asking about. In the beginning I wasn’t sure that I, I had that much conflict. But the more I wrote, uh, the more it seemed like I needed it.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that that’s what makes great storytelling great is that it’s filled with conflict. In fact, we Last time we talked on this show, we talked about your, uh, your coursework at UCLA with Hal Ackerman, who I was also a student of and still know quite well. In fact, Hal’s been on this show twice. Uh, and he’s a big time proponent of conflict.

Gabby Gruen: Ah.

Steve Cuden: As well as everyone that teaches at ucla.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, he is.

Steve Cuden: So I think you’re very good at it. I don’t think there’s a barely a breath in your storytelling that isn’t filled with conflict.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, that’s cool. Thank you.

Steve Cuden: Yeah. Uh, um, and I want to go back a half a step to your comedy writing, because this has levity in it. It has some very funny stuff in it, though it’s quite dark. Would you say that comedy must be infused with conflict as well?

Gabby Gruen: I think so. You know, um, you know, you’re setting something up and you’re paying it off in a short time in comedy, maybe in a screenplay or in a novel. You don’t. You don’t pay it off as quickly, but you’re setting it up for an even bigger payoff later on.

Steve Cuden: The conflict itself is part of what I think makes a lot of comedy work.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: It’s something rubbing against something m. Yeah.

Gabby Gruen: I mean, my favorite. My favorite comedy in the last few years is Veep. Every. Every second is full of conflict.

Steve Cuden: Every single second of that story of that show is filled with conflic. Yeah, that’s a. That’s a wonderful show. It’s one of my favorite comedies of all time.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. Great.

Steve Cuden: Um, so did you. Now, you say you met and dealt with characters in your real life who inspired you for some of the people in this story, was the story itself inspired by anything real that happened to you?

Gabby Gruen: Um, I don’t think so.

Steve Cuden: So you made that up. That was all imaginative.

Gabby Gruen: That was all imagined. Yeah, I think it was a. An early screenplay of mine.

Steve Cuden: So you were developing this for movies and you turned it into a book?

Gabby Gruen: Uh, yes, I did. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: I think you said you did that with the uniform as well.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, uh, yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that that’s, um, a very good way to take a screenplay that you haven’t sold and turn it into something if you think the story is valuable and worth telling.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yep. It’s, you know, it creates. You have this container with interesting events that, you know. It’ll work as a novel as well.

Steve Cuden: Indeed. So you write in the book, and I’m going to quote you quote, billy didn’t stumble into his career, this survival mode, because he was a thrill Seeker. He was a nothing seeker. Too impatient to put the time into anything respectable. He struggled only to get from one dead moment to. To the next a half assed Zen version of living in the moment. Close quote. I think that’s quite brilliant and a wonderful way to describe someone. These are people. He’s a person that you. If not an amalgam of people. He’s like someone that you already know.

Gabby Gruen: Absolutely.

Steve Cuden: That’s wild.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. The people that I knew who lived in that world were nothing seekers.

Steve Cuden: Nothing seekers.

Gabby Gruen: And I’m not sure that I had ever thought of that phrase before I sat down to write that paragraph. But.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s, that’s called inspiration. Right.

Gabby Gruen: That was fun.

Steve Cuden: Where, where did you learn about Billy’s quite brutal resourcefulness? Now I know you grew up on the streets. Is that where you learned his brutal resourcefulness or elsewhere?

Gabby Gruen: Yes, yes, that was where I learned about that. Um, and then, you know, he’s a tough guy and then you say. And then you have that little ah sequence where he goes to Israel to try and get in touch with his Jewishness. And that doesn’t quite fit, uh, him either. But in fact it’s not the Jews in Israel that he connects to, you know, um, but he just, he connects to people who are just trying to get by. He sort of sees, he sort of sees a, you know, a simpatico with hustlers, wherever they are.

Steve Cuden: Well, he’s trying to find himself throughout the whole story.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yes. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: He, he really doesn’t really know who he is, even though he’s kind of laid back about all of it. Yeah, he’s not in, he’s not in panic mode most of the time. He’s just doing.

Gabby Gruen: He’s not. But you know, uh, as I look at it, and I was asking myself questions about it, I remember that something that Hal Ackerman said to me, the idea. And it wasn’t about this, it was something about something else that a character was looking for a home. I think that’s a big part of Billy, you know, um, his connection, his connection to Lenny, uh, and to, uh, Sandy. Those are all. And, uh, and forget me, forgive me. I don’t remember Lenny’s wife’s name. But that’s also a sort of a, A hunger for home.

Steve Cuden: Let’s see, her name, her name is probably.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, Mary Alice.

Steve Cuden: Mary Alice, that’s correct.

Gabby Gruen: Mary Alice. You know, in Detroit. So this, since the story is, uh, in many ways about Jews, uh, growing up in Detroit, I went to Wayne, uh, State University, uh, downtown I call it the Harvard of inner city Detroit. And in that school, it seemed like all of the women were Catholics and their names were Mary. And I had to. And I wanted to, uh, tip my hat to those women. Um, it was their names of Mary or Catherine or Mary Alice or Mary Catherine. And that’s the inspiration for, uh, for Mary Alice. In my book.

Steve Cuden: A lot of it’s about guilt, isn’t it?

Gabby Gruen: Oh, I forget. Is it?

Steve Cuden: Well, I’m. I’m not. Not your story. I’m talking about people who are either Jewish or Catholic. Both have a deep sense of guilt.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, in that sense, yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. Um, and I think that. I think that that’s what makes both groups interesting.

Steve Cuden: I agree with you.

Gabby Gruen: It’s an animating force.

Steve Cuden: So I’m not spoiling anything when I say this because it’s early in the story. Where did you come up with the idea of smuggling birds in Detroit, of all places?

Gabby Gruen: Oh, I don’t know where that came from, but I remember thinking that I didn’t want it to be a garden variety, uh, A garden variety crime. You know, I thought I would. I wanted to make it visually interesting. And the idea of birds in frozen Detroit struck me as a great sort of visual, uh, anti. Metaphor.

Steve Cuden: Well, it really is, because it’s so unexpected. You would not expect birds in the dead of winter in Detroit being smuggled or even moved around. I mean, because there would be no birds in the trees at that time, so they’d have to do something to take care of them and keep them warm and all the rest of it.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. And I remember patting myself on the back for that.

Steve Cuden: Well, and well done. Do you. I mean, when you came up with that, it was like sort of an immediate epiphany for you then.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, it was. It was. You know, it’s sort of like when you come up with that, you’re ready to move on, um, to the next five pages.

Steve Cuden: Exactly right. Well, so I’m going to quote you again. You write, that’s the way Billy contemplated his lawless life. Criminality was not a career choice as much as it was an accident. It was a kind of opportunity. Like all the Germans who didn’t subscribe to Nazism, but saw it as their path to riches. Are you saying that crime is something people can just fall into, not by choice?

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yeah, I do. I think that for people that aren’t career oriented, you know, you stumble into things.

Steve Cuden: Nothing seekers.

Gabby Gruen: Nothing seekers. And I think, uh, Germans. I don’t know if you. If you saw this from the uniform. Germans were not necessarily virulent anti Semites as much as they were just careerists, you know, getting, uh, from, uh, one moment to the next.

Steve Cuden: Sure. They, they needed a job, and that was a job. And it turned into one of the most heinous jobs ever.

Gabby Gruen: Yes. Yes. In fact, my. If I may bring up my next book for a second.

Steve Cuden: Sure.

Gabby Gruen: It’s called after the War, and it’s based on my mother’s experience after World War II. She was an Auschwitz survivor, and she wants to go home to see who survived the war. And she finds a Nazi family living in her family’s house. And. And the guy. And the guy who is the head of the house is the city’s orchestra conductor.

Steve Cuden: This is a true story.

Gabby Gruen: Yes.

Steve Cuden: Uh, that’s wild.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, it’s pretty wild. But my point is, is that, you know, we have our preconceptions of who the bad guys are. I love the fact that we can take a guy who is like an art book lover or a, um, symphony conductor, and those people can be, uh, just as horrible as gangsters.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the, you know, that’s, uh, one of the most horrific parts about all of it. It’s just ordinary people doing evil, uh, things.

Gabby Gruen: Yes.

Steve Cuden: They’re caught up in it somehow. Well, some of that’s in your story. In both the uniform and in ride, uh, of a lifetime, people caught up in things. Like Billy Pearl is caught up.

Gabby Gruen: Yep.

Steve Cuden: He doesn’t set out to be that way. It’s just. He just gets stuck in the. In the grinder.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, exactly.

Steve Cuden: You’re not, by the way, I think you’re not equating Detroit hoodlums with Nazis, are you?

Gabby Gruen: No, I’m not. But if you are not career oriented, you know, whatever comes your way, if there’s money in it or some form of advancement, you let it happen. You, you, you push it. You see where it takes you.

Steve Cuden: That’s true. Uh, hopefully it doesn’t take you down a bad path.

Gabby Gruen: No, I hope not.

Steve Cuden: Indeed. Well, lots of people have jobs their entire lives that they don’t. They’re. They don’t like, but they do it because they need the money.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And they do it for decades, uh, and retire on it, uh, even though it’s not really their heart and soul.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah. Compromise is a really interesting, uh, thing to explore. Um, it really is. Ah. A lot of times the thing that moves people the most.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely. Well, you got to survive a survival instinct. Um, and speaking of survival, we’ll go back to Sandy here for a second. Sandy being Billy’s girlfriend in the story who she then wants him to manage and take her out to la. Um, and she’s a stand up comedian. Uh, and I’m just wondering, you know that world from having written for comics. Have you ever done stand up?

Gabby Gruen: I have.

Steve Cuden: You’ve done it?

Gabby Gruen: I’ve done it. I did it fairly recently in fact.

Steve Cuden: Really.

Gabby Gruen: I did it partially to see uh, how well I could do. And I did okay. You know, but I also, um, talking about my life, went up on the stage and I carried my, my copy of the uniform on stage.

Steve Cuden: Always the salesman, huh, Abs?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: You’re going to push that product one way or another.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, you never know. You never know.

Steve Cuden: So why would Billy in his circumstance want to be her manager? What would his motivation be?

Gabby Gruen: You know, I don’t think he wanted to. You know, they were just in the comedy club that he, he had a flat tire. He want, he wandered into the comedy club. They ended up having a conversation and a guy she didn’t like was hustling her and he, but he wanted to promote himself as her manager. And she pointed at Billy and says, he’s my manager. And so Billy just went along with

Steve Cuden: it, which he does all, all throughout the whole story. He just goes along to get along.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Even when it requires violence and mayhem, he’s sort of still going along to get along.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: Would you say the book’s main theme is survival and evading death? What do you think the main theme of the book is?

Gabby Gruen: I think it’s survival and what I uh, just brought up the idea of home, finding home in other people. That emotional connection is uh, really important.

Steve Cuden: As you were working on the book, especially as you got into multiple drafts, could you tell that things were working for you? Could you, could you feel it?

Gabby Gruen: I did feel it, yeah. I did feel it. So you know, the, the hold the whole car thing just felt like a real natural thing for me.

Steve Cuden: Are you a car fanatic?

Gabby Gruen: I’m not, but I mean I’m interested in them. But I will tell you that my brother in law has a GTO and I consulted with him about all things gto. So half of the references in that story are uh, you know, come from him or come or come from my research.

Steve Cuden: Would you call that your main research was on the cars or did you research the hoodlums as well?

Gabby Gruen: No, it’s the cars. The cars, yeah. I didn’t, the, I didn’t feel like I needed to research the hoodlums, they came, they came. Simple. Simple.

Steve Cuden: That was already under the skin.

Gabby Gruen: I guess so. I guess so.

Steve Cuden: Well, they’re very. And you did do them in a way where they’re um, very dramatic and yet somehow amusing at the same time.

Gabby Gruen: And they amused me at the time, uh, you know, as I was writing it.

Steve Cuden: Well, you can tell, I can tell now that I’ve read two of your books that I can tell when you’re really, uh, into and amused by what you’re writing. It comes off on the page.

Gabby Gruen: M. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I appreciate that.

Steve Cuden: So what would you say was the biggest challenge in writing this book? What was the hardest thing to do?

Gabby Gruen: Uh, wow. The biggest challenge? Um, just getting this character from who has very, uh, little ambition to go from place to place. He has other people kind of pull him along. There’s Sandy and there’s Lenny and there’s Mary Alice and they each present him with challenges that get him another five or ten pages into the story that get him uh, really, um, threatened, uh, where it becomes a life and death kind of a story for him.

Steve Cuden: And ultimately it works out okay for him, even though he goes through hell and back to get there.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: And, and again he’s still, even as he uh, gets to the end and things work out, he’s still going along to get along, which I found amusing.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. Right.

Steve Cuden: So am I correct that this is a self published book?

Gabby Gruen: It is.

Steve Cuden: And so as an ex advertiser, what are you doing aside from being on a show like this? What, what are you doing, if anything to promote your books? How are you promoting? You’re going on stage as a stand up comedian but bringing your books with you?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: What, what else, what do you do?

Gabby Gruen: Um, so I’ve created a number of videos. I’ve hired people to create videos for me. I’ve created a few myself. Put them on TikTok and ah, YouTube. Not as much as I should, I fear, but uh, well, it’s a very,

Steve Cuden: very difficult market to be in there. Just there’s something like 60 to 80,000 books a year published. So you’re, you’re, you’re in that whirlwind and you’re trying to separate yourself somehow.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, yeah. So that’s why I, I mean I, that’s why I want to get help. That’s why I want to have an agent, uh, and a publisher.

Steve Cuden: You’re looking for an agent now to, to work on the next book?

Gabby Gruen: For the next book, yeah.

Steve Cuden: So if you were starting out as A writer today. I know it’s. You’ve been as a writer, working at it for a long time, but not as a novelist. If you were, you know, what. What would you say to those that are just trying to figure out whether they should be writing novels or not? Why do it?

Gabby Gruen: See what I, uh, would say. See what works for you personally, um, what lines up with your skills. Just know it’s going to take some time to become pretty good.

Steve Cuden: Would you say. Would you say you’re a disciplined writer?

Gabby Gruen: I am. I’m, um. You know, I go to my coffee shop every day.

Steve Cuden: Oh, you write in a coffee shop?

Gabby Gruen: I do, yeah. I go to my coffee shop every day because I need to find out what’s going to happen. I’m really into my next story as an audience member. So, uh. And that’s, uh. Uh, that’s what I get out of the coffee shop experience. Well, you know, there are people there that become your friends. I have coffee shop friends. And it just is sort of like a comfortable spot for you to lose yourself in a story. And that’s what I always. That’s what I’m always hoping for.

Steve Cuden: Are they other writers or are they from all walks of life?

Gabby Gruen: There are other writers there, but I’m not sure that I’m connecting with them.

Steve Cuden: So you’re not. You’re not, uh, pitching things to each other for feedback?

Gabby Gruen: No, no.

Steve Cuden: When you’re meeting people in the coffee shop, they’re giving you an insight into life, into their lives.

Gabby Gruen: Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s just other people. They’re. They’re friends there. You know, some of. There’s a woman there who is a. An editor of. Of sorts. I mean, we’ve never spoken a whole lot about my work, but it’s just kind of nice to have that sort of literary friend, you know, it’s interesting. You see, a lot of. I find this, uh, encouraging. A lot of women come in there

Steve Cuden: with a book that they’re reading or writing.

Gabby Gruen: Reading. A woman who came in there with a. With a Doberman pinscher. Really nice woman from Italy. And we developed nice, uh, friendship. And, uh, I liked her dog and everything. And I. She never came back at this, but I told her she was my coffee shop wife. We just seemed to get along, you know, but, uh, I think I may have overstepped.

Steve Cuden: Well, you have to be a little careful what you say to people in public.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, truly, I thought it was fairly innocent, but.

Steve Cuden: Oh, uh, well, so what do you do then to stay disciplined? Is it going to the shop Is that what does it for you?

Gabby Gruen: I do and I think about it a lot. You know, I’ve got my phone and I use the Notes app so that whenever I have a thought that relates to my work, I can put it down without losing an important thing.

Steve Cuden: That is a very important thing that you’ve just said. I frequently ask people on this show, what do you do to, when you have a thought, what do you do to preserve it? Do you write it down on a piece of paper? Do you put, you put it in your Notes app in your phone?

Gabby Gruen: And another thing I do with my phone is, uh, if you’re wondering about AI, I will use AI for research. Like I will, you know, I will ask it what, uh, what did the buildings look like in Prague in 1945, that sort of thing, so that I can create uh, a clearer picture of that world.

Steve Cuden: And you’re looking for actual images as well as perhaps some text about that?

Gabby Gruen: Yes, yes.

Steve Cuden: It’s a lot easier than having to go to a library and dig it out by hand.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it really is.

Steve Cuden: I assume in your career you’ve had to do multiple different assignments at the same time, especially in the world of advertising. Um, how do you handle multiple different things at one time? How do you handle life and writing and other assignments and things like that? What do you do?

Gabby Gruen: I’m not sure that I have a plan. I just kind of divide up my day. You know, when I was, when I was writing screenplays, they would, you know, sort of occupy the bigger part of my day. I’m in those days. I also were doing advertising related stuff. I was doing what was called director’s treatments, which is a, a way to sell ad agencies or studios on the vision of a director. I would ask the director, how do you see these characters, you know, um, what, you know, what do they look like, how did they act and um, and uh, how do they interact with the product? You know, because there was a lot of this was advertising related.

Steve Cuden: Right.

Gabby Gruen: But um, so I had a. And to tell you the truth, those then became the bigger part of my day and I would, you know, sort of move the screenwriting to the evening.

Steve Cuden: I’m gonna bet that those interviews, uh, and ways that you pick people’s brains actually helped you to think about how to write your own stuff.

Gabby Gruen: Unquestionably. Unquestionably. I didn’t really know, you know, I had a, ah, friend who was a commercial director and um, a wonderful guy named Brent Thomas. And um, he was the guy who said, you know, you really should try and do this. You might be able to make a living at it. And I made a little bit of a living with it, but I also appreciate it. Appreciated it because I had to think of it, um, I had to think of the world of advertising as a world of images and characters and action. And how do you describe that to the guy who’s paying you, uh, to do this?

Steve Cuden: So you had to be a good writer, even though it. You weren’t writing a novel, you were writing a commercial.

Gabby Gruen: That’s right. And I had to talk about simplifying. You had to be really clear.

Steve Cuden: Super clear.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah. Because you wanted to. You wanted to, uh, grab, uh, other directors to kind of keep employing you. And, uh, I think I was pretty good at landing the job for the director, you know.

Steve Cuden: Wow. So you must have been very popular if that’s the way they looked at you.

Gabby Gruen: I was pretty popular, yeah.

Steve Cuden: Well, if you’re helping people get work by making it clear for them, that’s a very powerful thing.

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, I’m not sure that there’s a whole lot of work for those people anymore.

Steve Cuden: This is true for an awful lot of people in that business. Well, I’ve been having just the most wonderful conversation with Gabby Gruen, and, uh, he’s the author of two books that I’ve read, the Uniform and the Ride of a Lifetime. And we’re, uh, going to wind the show down a little bit right now. And I’m wondering, uh, in all of your experiences, uh, you’ve already given us a. An amusing, offbeat, uh, story in the last episode. But I wonder if you have a unique story you can share with us that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny. That’s more than what you have already, uh, said throughout the show.

Gabby Gruen: This is just more related to the ride of a lifetime. And, um, what was fun about this was that it tells you a little bit about the character, is that he had this gto, the judge. He won it in a card game. That’s the kind of guy he is. He acquired his transportation in card games.

Steve Cuden: Have you ever done that?

Gabby Gruen: No, I was not. You know, I’m not a great gambler. I’m a losing gambler.

Steve Cuden: You would have lost your car if you. If you’d gambled it.

Gabby Gruen: I would have. You know, I wrote something down about, um, how I, uh, how I handle negative criticism, you know, and I said it. And my thought was that it depends on who is giving it, the astuteness of the criticism and, um, uh, whether it was good criticism. You know, uh, we talked about, uh, Hamlet versus Godzilla, uh, last time, and, uh, Hal Ackerman said to me, it sounds like you just thought that up on the way in here. This is my screenwriting class. And I did. And it sounds like nothing. It sounds like, uh, like it was worthless. But in six months or a year, I wrote a really fun screenplay, a kind of a great send up of Shakespeare. So it depends on who says it, what they say and how I, how I like to take it, where I like to take that criticism. If it’s good criticism and it makes you a good, a better writer, so much the better.

Steve Cuden: Indeed. So is that, uh, what will suffice for your piece of advice for today?

Gabby Gruen: Yeah, I mean, yeah, criticism can be a real help. Uh, you know, not always, but if it’s good, if it’s helpful criticism, it’s my advice.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that it’s great to get feedback. We work in a lonely profession where you’re by yourself a lot and you don’t always know whether what you’re doing is valuable or not. It’s good to get that feedback, isn’t it?

Gabby Gruen: It really is. I just started sending out drafts of my new novel hoping to get some sort of feedback because you never really know.

Steve Cuden: As I say, that’s one of the biggest dilemmas for I think most writers is we don’t know what we’ve written until somebody else tells us it’s good or not. Truly, you know, we get lost, as the old cliche is, we get lost in the forest for the trees. And it can be very difficult to know whether you have something that’s worth publishing or making into a movie.

Gabby Gruen: It truly is. Truly, it’s vital.

Steve Cuden: Well, it is vital. It really is that you get that kind of, um, sort of confidence builder by having other people tell you, yeah, I got it, it’s fun, it works. Or wait a minute, you’ve got a problem here and that can then help you to get to the next place that it needs to be. Well, Gabby Gruen, this has been an absolutely wonderful episode of Story Be Today. And I, I can’t thank you enough again for your, your time, your energy and your wisdom. And, you know, those of you that, uh, are interested in reading fun, Two fun books. Check out the Uniform and the Ride of a Lifetime. Thank you so much for being on the show with me today, Gabby.

Gabby Gruen: Thank you, Steve. It was a blast.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like, this episode won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to. Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable, forgettable,