The 5X5 Interview: Brett Martin, Freelance Writer
The Gawker brain-trust is hard at work coming up with rare interview specimens like the blue-footed "freelance writer." We present one at the top of its class: Brett Martin. You can find him in the pages of the finest English-written publications being hawked on newstands today. Brett is also a Little Gray Book lecturer and he's even jumped out of a plane in the name of service journalism. If he had only landed on Graydon Carter's head, Brett would've done us all a favor.
Age/Location/Occupation
31/Brooklyn/Freelance Writer
1. Rumor has it you've done some stunt journalism, one time you remained nude for three days and another time you paid people to pray for you. If you are in fact a stunt journalist, why don't you go all Paper Lions or Open Net and try something dangerous, like writing a book of poetry a la Mr. Blonde from
Reservoir Dogs. That would be a truly dangerous. It could ruin your cred forever.
I did a lot of that back when I worked for Time Out New York — like jumping out of a plane and trying out for the Mets and eating as much foie gras as possible in one night. I guess "stunt journalism" is kind of the retarded nephew of what used to be called "participatory" journalism — back when it wasn't a given that whatever story you had couldn't possibly be more interesting than the cheap first-person jokes you could score off it. On the other hand, it's an excellent way to get to do stuff for free. I do like to think that my stunts are always in service of something. The naked story, for instance, was at least partially in service of GQ renting me and my girlfriend a villa in St. Barth to be naked in. The prayer story for Esquire was about the medical studies that claimed to show that long-distance prayer could heal everything from heart disease to impotence. We decided to test it by getting people to pray for me to win at the Preakness, catch a lot of fish, have marathon sex, etc. (Ain't none of it worked.) As for the poetry, the moment somebody offers the villa or the foie gras to write it, I'm on it — though the "grittiest" I've gotten is on the beach naked in St. Barth.
2. How would you characterize your involvement with those card-carrying Dada-ist of the Little Gray Book lectures, and which member is most likely to bring a toilet up on stage and call it art?
Sometimes I've felt in danger of becoming the LGB's version of Jackie the Jokeman — like when I judge the spelling bee or the dog show. But Hodgman will always kindly remind me that nobody's paying enough attention to me for it to matter. Mostly, I am happy to read the "executive committee" emails and ignore them since John always knows exactly what he's doing and it's always good. On stage, I've done things like setting a blimp on fire, playing around with a laser pointer and "reading" a pig's spleen. So, sad to say, that would probably be me with the toilet.
3. When you interviewed Tom Waits, what kept you from slapping him silly for yanking your chain with his roundabout answers and outright fabrications — besides it being a phone interview, of course?
Oddly, Tom Waits is the one of the few celebrities I've interviewed that I didn't want to slap silly. I kind of respected the fact that he had no truck with I've-been-listening-to-you-since-college-and-always-wanted-to-ask-this questions. And if I have to get schtick, I'd always rather it be Waits schtick.
4. As a freelancing journalist, you have a license to cover any crazy thing that you can sell to an editor. For instance, I see that you did a story on hot tubs for the magazine Men's Journal. Please tell me, how hard up are editors for stories these days.
Just hard-up enough to prevent me from getting a real job, but not so hard-up that I can even think about buying a house.
5. Finally, if you have a good cab story, we'd love to hear about it.
I guess I don't Google very well if you have to resort to a cab question.
Top Five Recent Baseball Players Brett Martin Wants To Name His Future Child After (And The Resulting Names)
1) Xavier Nady Martin
2) Homer Bush Martin
3) Heathcliff Slocombe Martin
4) Lastings Milledge Martin
5) Coco Crisp Martin
