Oral History of the Oral History of “Friday Night Lights”, Pt. 1
Robert Mays (Editor, Grantland): I said to Bill, I’ve got a story idea.
Bill Simmons (Editor-in-Chief, Grantland): It was a Tuesday and I hadn’t had my coffee yet. That’s about all I remember.
RM: Friday Night Lights is ending and we should write a story about it. Something that hasn’t been done before.
BS: I told him to go to Chuck. Maybe he could get a nice feature out of it. People seem to like his writing.
Chuck Klosterman (Consulting Editor, Grantland): I told Robert that it struck me as kind of boring. Editors can immerse themselves in the soft reality of page hits and Webby awards and user comments. But the hard reality is that no one wants to read features anymore, because they’re long and usually don’t get to the point. So I told him that, then told him there was something else he could do.
RM: I remember telling Chuck, An oral history? Seems kind of lazy. The type of thing any writer or editor could commission regardless of their skill as a journalist. The type of thing I thought we weren’t about at Grantland.
CK: I knew Robert hated those things, but I also knew Bill would love it.
BS: Naturally, I loved it.
RM: So I rounded up the writers and told them to get on it. Some of them told me to go fuck myself, that this was my idea and anyways they had better things to do. Some of them were game.
Jay Caspian Kang (Editor, Grantland): July of 2011 was a rough time. I was drinking a little. But mostly I was still playing L.A. Noire. It was awkward dodging Robert in the office, but that’s the price you pay. I still haven’t beaten that game, though.
Molly Lambert (Writer, Grantland): To be honest, I had nothing better to do.
RM: It was easy lining up all the writers after a little struggle, and easy enough lining up the interviews. All that had to be done was the calling.
ML: The first interview went poorly. I was supposed to talk to Taylor Kitsch. First, my phone wasn’t working. Then my recorder broke. Then I asked Taylor if he could call me on my Google Voice number so I could record it that way. He said he didn’t have any time for that.
Chris Jones (Writer, Grantland): I thought, “Why the hell am I waiting to talk to Derek Jeter’s girlfriend?”
RM: It wasn’t a pretty start. But it was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.
(To be continued in Pt. 2)
