858. - Jordan Tannahill

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How long gone? I'm good. It's a beautiful Thursday. The sun is shining here in Nashville, Tennessee. things people call it, but I'll spare us all. Jason, how are you? We got Nashville 10 a key. That's how much it costs to buy a Coke there. That's literally my favorite, and that's what I was going to say. There's also the popular Nash Vegas, which feels more real than ever now. It feels a little too hunting wives-y to me, though. Well, the bachelorette party influx sort of leads to that conclusion. It's tough to avoid. Man, I'm this many years old back when... When a kilo is $10,000. Do you remember that? I wonder how much is it. Listeners weigh in. How much is a kilo of cocaine in 2025? And this is, I don't want the hookup price. I want kind of the regular guy off the street price. You want the standard. I'm going to walk into Hermes. I'm buying the Birkin. Just retail. Just retail. Cost of kilo cocaine. No, don't. I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess $22,500. What's your guess? I'm saying it's touching. I'm saying $20,000. I don't want this from the computer. I need this from a real street dude. I need real data. But this will work for the sake of argument. What do we got? What is ChatGPT saying? It's too wide of a net. It says it can be as low as 14.5 in San Diego, but as much as 45.

In Anchorage, Alaska. You've got to pay $45. I mean, look, Anchorage, Alaska, a place that I've been lucky enough to visit, that's the last place on earth I'd want to do cocaine, so they should be charging $45 a key for that. It's just hard to get up. You have to get through so many obstacles to get your kilo in Anchorage. Okay, this is good data. So anybody that's pushing weight, that's listening, let us know what the real price is. We need to hear it from kind of the streets. You're living in Venezuela. Yeah. Let us know. We need to know. We'll come and get your boat. If you're going to go fishing in El Salvador, we will explode you. We're going to explode you. Yeah, I'm in Nashville. The weather really is something else, but I went to a... I don't care about the weather, you stupid bitch. Tell me about the Hermes party. The Hermes party's tonight. The opening thing was last night. We did some line dancing, which I obviously did not really participate in, but other people seemed... Yeah, I think this cowboy kind of aesthetic is really starting to be on the rise lately. Have you noticed this pop up lately? Well, I mean, at least this is where it was invented to some extent, so I feel like they can lay claim to it. In the House of Hermes, that's a good point. No, I mean, honestly, with the saddle making, it's true, but... Between the saddle making and the... I'm saying Nashville is... It is ground zero, and they did, you know, but I didn't do that. But we went to dinner at this place called Margot that's sort of like one of the first good restaurants here, and I realized I had not been there in, you know, a decade or whatever. Margot. And I got to tell you, it was... fucking smacking it was delicious and i i find i mean it was only 20 or 30 people so it wasn't like a crazy dinner but still like executing that kind of thing is always tough as far as like it'll be fun but the food being really good is rare it's like a wedding you know of course but it was you for a 30 person fashion dinner i'll be going to one tomorrow thanks to our friends uh chloe uh but you know you don't you don't go there to lead with the culinary experience you go there hang out with your friends the food's gonna be good and it's not gonna be exactly great but you're i only saw the little mini birkin slice of cake that everyone got which is well that was like the entire uh the entire event was based around that no no that's the thing that was a surprise from the chef and i don't i don't think

And I was like, that's a lot of fucking work. But the food at Margo, I need to go back for a regular meal because it was quite good. And I was very pleased. What was your bite of the night? Chris Black? Bite of the night. Well, there was like a pasta with like a mushroom that was delicious. But it was like kind of the pasta was sort of in sheets. You know what I mean? It wasn't like that was delicious. But this is a shock. And I'm almost embarrassed to say it. There was an apple ribbon. salad with blue cheese hazelnuts and some sort of green and it was unbelievable delicious and you know i hate fruits and salads okay you know and i know this is a little bit different this isn't watermelon feta this isn't strawberries yeah in a summer salad this was the base of the salad was these apple ribbons but it was delicious yeah it's a it's a classic pairing uh of a blue cheese with a sweet fruit like a like an apple or a quince or a pear whatever A crunch from a nut and then a bitter green, you know, a frisee or something. Maybe you had a bitter field green. It could have been a bitter. I would recognize a frisee, I think. I'm not trying to boast, but I think I would recognize it. So it could have been. Yeah, you would. Just a simple field green. But, yeah, it was delicious. And I was very pleased to have. Because, you know, also at those dinners, you know, you don't really. Usually it's kind of like you don't really eat. No one really. This was like. I think the food is too good for anyone to resist. That's fun. And I think maybe being outside of New York and L.A., people are okay with eating their meal, which is something that we could dig into deeper probably at some point. So shout out to your Hermes family. Maybe one day I'll get the invite. Who's to say? Look like there's a lot of fashion greats at that table with you, right? Alex is here, Lauren, Sherman. But then the guy from The English Teacher, that show everybody loves. was was a cross for me i hadn't met him before our soft canceled shouty he he lived in atlanta when he shot that show so we had a lot to talk about yeah when we had dinner with um ryan o'connell and uh and core jefferson a couple weeks ago at quarter sheets

ryan was talking about how great season two of of the english teacher is and i watched a couple episodes in the sauna people people love it i mean i was giggling once i get past this once i finally dig into this victoria beckham documentary i'll have a lot more time on my hands you know yeah it's it's not it's it's you can you can tell when the when the documentary is made by yeah i really love the documentary you made about my husband yeah but i look like a fucking idiot in it and can i can you make one where i look cool i found him even though he has a crazy women's voice i found him to be so much more charming like i it was actually interesting and i learned something and i don't care about david beckham one way or the other but i liked him at the end you know what i mean and i i feel like that is but it didn't feel like it was produced by him i think because that guy fisher stevens is actually a good director and they knew each other it was actually it was actually good i don't know i i just feel like this i i feel like it's harder for some people fisher couldn't do the victorios he's too close to it i think he's too close to david but somehow that worked is what i'm saying like i think it actually it didn't he didn't spare him like i think a lot of people would do in that situation but i'll get to it um yeah i was i was in new york And I just got back last night. Shout out to Vic. Shout out to Nine Orchie. Shout out to... We're shouting out to Target. That's who we're fucking shouting out. Shout out to Target and Woolrich for my urban Woolrich activation where I got to play some Meg the Stallion and Lil' Kim and things of that nature. Had a great time. I forget about Meg the Stallion. I was wearing a shirt. The sleeves were long. I like Meg the Stallion. She was just sitting courtside in Vegas. Get the feet out. She's at the G League? She's at the preseason. Megan Thee Stallion's at preseason. She's too fine to be a preseason. That is crazy. I do agree with this. Maybe she built it around a new restaurant opening in Vegas. I don't know. She got a room rigged for her squad at the win. She brought 20 people. But, I mean, that seems crazy. Like, I know you're looking. It's possible that she is looking for a man or in a relationship with a man. A lot of people do scouting in the preseason games. That's true. She's doing a different type of scouting.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Well, you know, when I went to see Morrissey alone in Las Vegas, it was preseason. And I did notice when I was at Mr. Chow's solo, there were several NBA players. And I'm sure, well, historically, NBA players are looking for love. whether they have found it or not already, if you catch my drift. NBA players famously looking for love. So maybe it is a fertile ground for locking somebody in before the season kicks off, but once they've signed their contract. That beautiful purgatory. Meg deserves a big, tall, sexy piece of NBA baller man. That's true. She's very successful, very good looking. Very talented. And she should not settle. And I want nothing but the best for her. Oh, wait. She's dating Clay Thompson, who is, unfortunately, a pussy. But maybe she found a new... Okay, that does make more sense. That makes more sense. Clay Thompson, whiter than me. We're not... defeating the Streg at allegations, talking about, like, we know more about Meg Thee Stallion than NBA. I want to say this. I looked this up. They just went public with their relationship in July of 2025. So it could be, there's still time for him to fumble. You know what I mean? Because I think Megan might want someone a little more rough around the edges. Or maybe it's all an act. Who knows? Yeah, Clay, I wouldn't call him a screet baller. By any means. You know what's crazy about... Yeah, Clay would get his shit handed to him. How many famous Clays are there? It's him and Aiken. You know what I mean? I hate to say it. I'll take Aiken in this. Because Clay Aiken spells it with a C. Clay Thompson spells it with a K. Yeah, oh, that's right. Yeah, Clay with a K. Kardashian mode. It's not good. But I'm seeing here, just quickly, you're much taller than him. He's only 6'5". That's disgusting. This is... Don't want no short, short. Yeah, this little dinky guy. Okay. Dinky MF. And that's his Hollywood height. That means he's doing what? 63.75 type shit. He's 63.75 for sure, especially depending on what footwear, if he's got the Under Armour contract. You know what I'm saying? Shout out to Clay. He's one of those. You always know the basketball player is going to be good if they don't know how to smile right in the photo.

Like, I don't know what to do with my mouth. Like, that kind of thing. I can only do one thing, and that is... Yeah, he's draining. Pull up. Drain in trees. Pull up from three. Yeah, let's... Oh, yeah, we were talking about the zines, ID Magazine, and not just ID, Friends of the Show, but, you know, many print publications partnering with digital media, the very thing that is ticking them down, to then launch a limited edition, print media it's i don't know i'm just trying to wrap my head around this life cycle and it's a little convoluted i can wipe wrap my head around the fact that substack is cutting checks and id wants to be the recipient of one of those and can do something cool because they obviously have a rich history of print but i'm just this this goes back to me talking about the re-engineering of cable television and now we just pay double the money for the same thing and it's just harder to use this feels like oh okay so we're gonna we're gonna take a lot of writers that have newsletters and we're gonna take their stuff from the internet and then print it into a zine that looks cool it is confusing but i also think that it's a good sign that even if you could read an essay from someone's newsletter You might prefer to have it in print. It feels like a good thing overall, but the question is that anybody reading any of it is, I guess, the real question. To me, you want to do one thing. I just want to make a magazine, and they're like, ooh, what about instead of just giving you money to keep your magazine open, you make a little zine, and it's printed out on a smaller, thicker paper, and then we'll give you 50 grand, and then you'll be able to keep. injecting that money into your troubled business for another you know keep the lights on for three more months well i well id is famously quite profitable off rip that was like the big news that they had they had booked like i can't remember the the amount dollar amount of of like advertising you know in the with the first issue but i think that i think it's more like sub stack is so desperate to be cool because it's not cool that they are

willing to pay whatever and id is like well we do print and that's what you don't do right so how about you pay us to do that and then we have a dinner to celebrate that that's what it that's like what it feels that's what it feels like and it's it's no different than sort of how every magazine like especially like a dazed is like an agency you know it's like you come to us and i i imagine that this is no different really you know what i mean What up? Give us one second. Give us one second. We're going to intro you really quick, and then we'll bop in. All right. Today, we do have a guest on How Long Gone. Jordan Tannehill is an author and a playwright who is, thank God, from Canada, Ottawa even, which is a city I have yet to discover. I can't wait to get into that with him. But let's give him a buzz. He's ready to rock. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Squarespace. Obviously, Jason, you and I spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web, so do our peers, our listeners, our friends, our colleagues, maybe even your parents if they're freaky. And if you're doing anything in the world, writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly, a website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative but also business-minded. Jason, there's one place to go for that, Squarespace. Yeah, Chris, I'm over here. I'm modifying calculators and putting Claude inside of them so you could cheat at school. And I just want a place where I could, you know, have everything all in one place. I can have the SEO tools so those future graduates can find me. And, you know, I'm able to accept, quote, unquote, donations for my services that might be gray area. You know what I mean? And then email campaigns. Hey, I got a new 2.3 version upgrade. Boom, boom, boom. Get the analytics going. Raise some money. Show your investor all of your cool analytics of what's going on. They're going to want to get in early. And we can use Blueprint AI to make your website look as professional as your competition, if not more.

So head to squarespace.com slash howlong for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code howlong to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable. And they're just easy but, you know, still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. You know, they focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated. but still effortless. Yeah, Chris, linen season is here. I wore a linen blazer to dinner a few nights ago in the warm California sun. But, you know, you got that Italy trip coming up this summer and quality European linen pants and shirts. Upgrade that look starting at just $34. You know, if you get a nice linen suit, a little t-shirt underneath it, some chill shoes, you're looking good, but you're staying cool. The inside of your special areas are nice and dry as you turn up with your besties. So elevate that summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash how long for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, even on a nice holiday now available in Canada. That is Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash how long. That'll get you free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince punto com slash how long. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by a new podcast from The Guardian stateside with Kai and Carter. This is covering a lot of our bases, Jason. It's trying to slow down. The news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world. And I know you particularly have quite a lot of questions. A lot of questions. But how often? Because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot. How many times do they do? Three times a week. And I have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do. That's just a guess. The Guardian is not some billionaire owned.

They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? Especially when it's not from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. Jordan, we have our water. We have our wah-wah. We do. We do. Do you have a coffee as well? Are you hydrate-maxing? I am. I'm double-fisting. You're double-fisting? Sure. Actually, speaking of that, I was talking to our mutual friend Ludwig Hurtado yesterday. Oh, yes. He was giving me some insider info. And I was looking at the Them magazine quote, and I believe you began the interview with Michael, who's been on the show, Cubby. Cubby? Cubby? Cubby. And you said, I had to cancel a fisting date to do this podcast. So did you have to cancel it? I know it's early. Did you have to cancel anything for today's podcast? I mean, I'm always canceling sex dates for work. That's super progressive of you, actually, to kind of... to kind of put yourself first for once. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so when you're doing the little, the scales of justice, you're weighing out the options of sex or work. Yeah. What's the percentage of the way it swings? Are you a good boy? Keep it 50-50? I try to. I try to keep it 50-50. You need a good balance. Well, the thing is, I completely agree, but I think the beauty of the gay community is that you guys are willing to kind of... let's say, meet up any time of day. So you can kind of squeeze this stuff in, no pun intended, any time. If you need an 11 a.m., there's somebody who's going to sign up for that appointment. Yeah, I mean, I'm best during the day. Like after dinner, I'm ready for bed. When you say I'm best, could you expand on that, please? You know, energy, looking fresh.

Yeah, you've showered. You've had two Celsiuses. You're ready to go. I completely understand. Big proponent of daytime sex. Very underrated. But I think it's cool that you guys allow sort of a 24-hour window versus two or three. We're always open. Exactly. Or I am. I can't speak for everyone. You're the waffle house. I guess it's like a Tim Horton of the South. You're always open. Water's always warm. Always up for a double-double. I had a double-double at In-N-Out last night for dinner. Isn't that something, you guys? Protein style, of course. What is the double-double at Tim Hortons? Two creams, two sugars. Okay, it's just the coffee. I didn't know if it was like a... Also, you get two donuts, you know, and it was a real... Oh, yeah. Do you do two creams and two sugars? Me? No, I drink it black. Oh, thank God. Well, I don't drink Tim Hortons coffee black. I drink coffee black. I wouldn't touch that stuff. You need two creams and two sugars. I was talking to Ludwig. He was talking about how you are an immigrant from Canada and you are creating art here in New York right now. There's tariffs. There's Trump. Every time I go to Canada over the last year, there's very national pride, anti-America stuff going on. a production in america has has trump caused you any troubles uh no thankfully not uh but i definitely was curious about how this production would be received at this particular inflection point in american politics you know i think this show has been in development for five years and frankly when trump was elected and i knew this production was happening i thought hmm i wonder if he's gonna just like so radically change the conversation that it'll feel mistimed or it'll just feel off. And in fact, I think the timing has been such that the show has really resonated with audiences, particularly queer and trans audiences at this particular moment. Yeah, I was going to say, it feels better. Okay, so you're saying a play called Prince Faggot is resonating with queer audiences more so? That's actually pretty crazy. Yeah, that's pretty crazy stuff. Well, I mean, I haven't seen the production, but everyone says it's fantastic that we've spoken to.

I only really know the title of it. So what are the political, you know, without giving away too much of the plot, what are some of the political implications at play in PF? Yeah. So the show follows a group of queer and trans performers who are reckoning with their relationship, initially with a specific photograph of a young Prince George. This photograph was circulating sort of the online. uh space back in i think 2018 it was 2017 perhaps this is this is based on like an experience you had or this was this is the inspiration was the photo yeah so i had a specific experience of seeing this photograph and having this strong instance of personal identification with this photo of this young of this young boy being like wow this he looks like a young gay kid in this photo and it was like this you know he had this very kind of unguarded sort of fey pose, which was very... Is this where he's wearing like a sweater vest, like a zip vest? He's wearing like a purple checked shirt, maybe shorts, looking at an ascending helicopter with this kind of look of delight. unguarded delight on his face you know obviously totally pre pre-conscious the way a gay guy looks at a helicopter yeah wow i'm i'm looking at it now and have you seen the the curb your enthusiasm episode where there's the gay kid and he wants the sewing machine right same i just sent you the photo chris and maybe never a gayer pose has been has been struck by a prince okay oh wow wow color has been added jordan okay thank you thank you for sharing because this gives a lot of time i mean this is it i think i think the the show i mean for me experiencing my own reaction to that photograph i was like okay how do we talk about queer childhood how do i even look i mean i look at these photographs of myself and i think wow this is i was a gay kid you know i wasn't i wasn't a queer man waiting i had I was this kind of unbroken continuum of being from the moment I was born until now. You wasn't fooling nobody even at three. Right. I mean, it's obviously a pre-sexual kind of idea of queerness. But nevertheless, it kind of like spurred sort of this series of thoughts about, yes, like childhood sexuality. How do we talk about it, particularly this moment where that feels so...

supercharged in our politics this idea of like queer and trans people as groomers and so forth hey we can straight people can be groomers too okay let's be let's be clear now yeah equal opportunity everybody can get it when it comes to grooming but go ahead um but uh yeah so the so the play kind of you know begins with this group of queer and trans performers kind of meditating on their own childhood photographs talking about their own relationship with this particular photograph of this of this uh real boy and then moving into a fictional space where we say okay like as a thought experiment what if the heir of the british throne grew up to be gay this is obviously a fictional prince george you know where we can't predict the the real life sexuality of this person and so we but we're using this as a jumping off point really to kind of uh interrogate our own relationships with power colonization and queerness and it's this kind of There's a sort of play within the play where you're following, yes, this kind of 10 years of the queer coming of age of the heir of the British throne, but also there's these... you know, this kind of meta theatrical monologues of the actual performers that be out of character and talking as themselves to the audience. Okay. That, that seems like it could be a little hard to follow. Is that, I mean, I mean, it's a lot of voices, I guess is what I'm trying to say, but like, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a cast of six, so it's not a huge, you know, it's not a super confusing story. It's a pretty straightforward story, but it's, there's a kind of toggling back and forth between what's real and what's fictional or what's, you know, a personal experience versus what's a fictional experience. It's pretty fascinating that like a single picture, like basically a paparazzi photo, I mean, you know, for lack of a better, had that big of an effect, but I get it. I think if you see something at the right time, it can do that. It's a powerful enough image. Have you considered or fantasized or daydreamed about, you know, in 10 years from now when Prince is 22 and coming home from... Honcho Weekend or whatever, do you think there's going to be a moment where he sees this play and contacts you? Have you had a premonition about this? I don't know. Whether he grows up to be straight or gay or whatnot, I think... Of course. Yeah, it's hard to say.

Whether the royal family is even aware of it happening here in New York, perhaps. I always wonder in general what the royal family is aware of. I feel like as far as people... go they might be the most sort of siloed that you can possibly be like i feel like yeah like how kim kardashian said like i would love to know how much a gallon of milk costs like i feel like the royal family doesn't even know like what day of the week it is and it's different for them i uh did have the chance to meet the current king and queen uh charles and camilla while i was living in uh in living in london what is the production called young man Oh, dear. Yeah, exactly. She was like, oh, you're a novelist. I love to read books. And that was the extent of the interaction. That's exactly what I mean. That's exactly what I mean. I do have books. Yeah, they're really pros at kind of the non-conversation, but the sort of very inoffensive, you know, small talk. Was it like an event where it was like a greeting line and you were getting an award? No. Okay, okay. I wasn't being awarded, but yeah, it was a greeting line. Yeah, just some... various canadians in london pretty much it's a pretty impressive like i have never obviously met the king and queen but those sort of receiving lines and the level of operation that it requires to make that sort of banal small talk with a hundred people is is impressive it's a skill in itself yeah it's a skill it's a skill i i don't know if i could do it yeah you could do that chris you you would i think you'd be very good at doing that as somebody who identifies as somebody who would be good at doing it as well that's a highly ritualized life and and a very performative life and that's what we kind of explore a little bit in the play is is you know how kind of theatrical a life it is and performative it is and it and uh you know there's this idea in the play that if you're living in this life of kind of heightened ritual and and stricture that actually you're kind of you desire a sort of like inverse liberation in your private life like and the idea that like perhaps we know we sort of imagine that like what if the

What if they have a really kinky private life as a way of counteracting? We know about Prince Andrew. How could they not have a little bit of a kink in the private life? They seem to be patient zero for that kind of stuff. Your royal family, Justin Trudeau, as well as Princess. Katipari. I'm sure they're getting up to some stuff, right? They're doing some yacht play. Yeah, our former royal family, although I suppose the Trudeau's are kind of always perpetually our royal family. Closest thing to whether they're in office or not, they're still the royal family. But I do think that the royal thing is just fascinating to me as an Anglophile because it's the one British thing that I just can't. care about yeah like i find them so uninteresting and i know that's like how they have to exist like that's their whole job is to be like smiling and sort of uninteresting and reading you know things that are written for them that's the whole job yeah yeah i can say that i'm like a royalist i guess growing up in canada a little i had sort of a lot of antipathy towards the royal family i felt like uh you know in canada the the wounds of colonization are not like a historic idea they're like open and separating very present tense and so i feel like there's yeah there's uh i mean they're also our head of state i mean at the head of the state of canada i mean they're on our currency it's it's a very uh you know you have a daily reminder of their role within the canadian politic the political world in the commonwealth yeah the claw holding you down yeah i just i think that there was a time especially when you know anyone gets married or of course like princess diana was definitely the biggest one where it was like that was like what good morning america was talking about you know it was like they were really trying and i think it really like like around the clock coverage of the royal wedding in america is is for a very certain kind of person yeah i think that they they try not try but i think that

i just wonder how many people here are that interested because it does feel kind of far away but maybe if you look at them like celebrities it's different yeah absolutely i think they're kind of in a way like the kardashians or or something they're they're as much a kind of just a famous family but there is yeah there is this great sort of national pride in you know it fell toward them in britain and i and i and i understand like the role they play politically and socially and kind of like the soft power that they uh they hold for for britain and i do understand that um but uh yeah i cannot say that i'm I never watched The Crown or any of these kind of fanfic pieces about the royals. I feel like you've got to stay away from that in the business that you're in. Too close to it. But you lived there. You lived in London. I lived in London for almost seven years, yeah. Did you go because you liked it, or was there a reason to be there? What was his name, Jordan? Yeah, well, his name was James. I was with a fellow there. for five years and then actually afterwards a guy named Alistair. So I had a couple very, uh, there were two, there were two over seven years. Um, but, uh, yeah, so I moved, I did move for love and then I moved for work. I mean, the, the British theater scene is, is great. Uh, and certainly a lot more expansive, I guess, than the one that I was moving from, uh, as, as great as the Canadian theater scene is. It was definitely, I was like eager to, yeah, just. see work elsewhere, make work elsewhere. So I was doing some stuff at the National there and, you know, collaborating with British artists. And it was great. It was a really fun experience. I had, you know, a chance to see a lot of work in Europe, which really inspired me. But ultimately, coming back to North America, I do feel like my context is here and being in New York. This is my first play in New York, Prince Faggot. So it feels like kind of an exciting, it's not exactly a homecoming, but it feels like a kind of a rival, I guess, and sort of setting up my style here. This is your debut. Yeah. We're still the center of the world in New York. I don't care what the haters say. Speaking of New York, as well as our royal family, I saw a photo with you and Anna Wintour, and Ludwig wanted me to ask you, did you hear her say the word faggot out loud? Yeah, no, she called me one to my face. She said, out of the way.

Yeah, she came, she came to the show. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. We've been really lucky to, to, you know, I mean, perhaps thanks to, to Jeremy, you know, it's definitely, he knows how to position something and is like guys very well. Yeah. A master of positions. Yeah. So yeah. And, and it came, Madge came, which was awesome. Madonna. Wow. Yeah, definitely. Anna and Madge, move over, Cola Scola. With people like that, do you get a heads up, or would you rather not know? I get about a six-hour heads up. I imagine people's plans... change when they're at the last minute. In demand. When they're not in demand, exactly. But you would prefer to know that a Madonna or an Anna Wintour are in the crowd, or would you prefer to not know that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's also not so big of a theater, so I feel like if I'm there, I would see them. Right, right, right. I like to know in advance. I don't go to every show, so it's nice to go to the shows where you can sort of welcome people. It's always fun for the cast as well to meet various people that are in their industry or in other industries that they really admire. I guess when we've had people in your business on the show before, I'm most interested in sort of the... Not financial, but how it all works. Because I think that Hollywood and how that works is dissected constantly in major publications and industry publications on podcasts. The music business is talked about constantly. And I think theater is obviously a little more niche in many ways, but I also think the economics of it. confuse me a little bit and it's like i i don't i don't understand like what the tipping point is i guess for something being truly successful not just um critically acclaimed yeah i'm i'm learning that too to be honest it's like i mean you're like i don't know i will say that i feel like there was some article that came out recently that i was reading that i think since the pandemic so since 2020 there's been like i don't know 43 or 45 new musicals on broadway and three have recouped

And all the others are still running at a loss or have closed or maybe will recoup in X number of years. Not dissimilar from the current film industry as well. Yeah, I mean, some plays fare better. But I honestly think that if you're kind of bringing an edgy, weird play to Broadway, you're kind of doing it not necessarily to make... a windfall account it's kind of like no i don't think i don't think it's yeah yeah well that's i didn't mean i didn't mean that that was anyone's goal i guess i i meant to be like like that figure you just shared is pretty mind-boggling yeah like but it also does feel like something that is a producer of a of a production like yours is sort of a patron of the arts that's how they're looking at it i i think so i mean There is money to be made on Broadway, but I think there is a lot less since the pandemic or it's or the way you make it is different. I think I think it's got a lot harder. I think inflation has made it a lot harder. Like theater costs, wages, materials, everything has just made it, you know, the sort of balance has been kind of thrown out of whack. So I think people are kind of trying to figure out what the economics of. commercial theater in the city are. And to be honest, I've never really dealt with commercial theater before. I mean, I'm like, I've like dyed the wool. When you say commercial, does that mean money exchanges? Yeah, exactly. So I'm like being paid for this. The Ottawa theater scene isn't, isn't rooted in commerce as Broadway. I'm in Toronto. I mean, I think when you have a hit play, you know, it's like. Your 50 friends see it, and that's about it. You go out for drinks with them. It's a deeply unglamorous job to be a playwright in Toronto as much as I... Unless you can get a Tory Burch deal, but otherwise it's tough. Whereas here is a lot more fun for sure. I just feel like it's an interesting – I mean I feel like it's also one of those things where you do something that you really believe in and you love it and the right person sees it and the monetary opportunity comes later. That's not what everything has to be about if it's just good. Yeah, and I think what's fun about –

doing theater in new york is that people care about it i mean it's a city that like loves theater you know you're you go to parties or functions and there's like some bankers go yeah you wrote that you know like people who are not in the theater see theater and know about it here it's part of the culture cultural conversation it's part of you know being a citizen uh in a way that i feel like it's not thought of elsewhere so that's been kind of fun to experience that here yeah that is i think that that is like why a certain kind of person still lives in new york and deals with the nightmare of it all is the access to things like you know what i mean it is it's like if you care about the arts in any way there's no other place to live if you really want access to it like year-round you know exactly well do you i guess speaking of a year-round access are is anybody doing like live streaming or any other ways to try and create revenue around you know like if oh mary for example cole was on like a year ago on our podcast huge hit show, doing well, probably one of the only few that are actually making a profit and not losing money. True, true. There's a lot of people in the world. I've tried to see the show and I couldn't get a ticket. And there's people all over the world that want to see it, people who watch 30 Rock and want to see Jane do Mary. If it was on a website and you could pay 20 bucks to live stream it, I feel like a lot of people would do that, right? Oh, this is huge for me personally. This episode of How I'm Gone, It was brought to you by TaskRabbit. Oh, baby, let me tell you something. This is not a joke. I use TaskRabbit a lot because I can't do anything. You need some art hung? TaskRabbit. You need something put together? A cabinet? Got to reach that cheese grater on the top shelf? TaskRabbit. Anything you need, TaskRabbit can take care of it for you. How it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs.

handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive, and that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app using promo code How long? Taskers book up faster, especially for same-day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code howlong with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. Hi Talk House Network listeners, it's your old friend Nels Klein from Wilco here. Wilco is touring this summer and we'd love to see you somewhere on the road. We're playing shows this June and July in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Chautauqua, New York, Lafayette, New York, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Vienna, Virginia, Forest Hills, New York, Portland, Maine, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Memphis, Tennessee, La Grange, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio. Plus, there are even more dates, some with Willie Nelson that I didn't even mention here. So please go to wilkoworld.net to see the full list of dates. We'll see you on the road this summer. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline Negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals. All of those deals in a bundle. Deals. Game day deals. Concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses. There's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting the... Priceline! Yeah, although that kind of defeats live theater, I suppose. I mean, I think that's part of... Of course it's not as good as being in the room, but if that's the way it's going with movie theaters...

you know yeah if it's either that or nothing right well i think i think there are i mean there are some initiatives around access and like uh yeah like live streaming especially you know i think that really came about around the pandemic but i know that there are like um like the national in the uk and a few other theaters will do like extraordinary archival recordings basically of their shows and then they'll screen them in movie theaters and so you can it's like nnt live okay for instance so you can see a show that was in london even if you live over here and you can go to the cineplex and watch it So there are a few kind of larger shows that do that. But I see what you're saying. You're saying like, yeah, that's cool, but the whole fucking point is that it's not that. Yeah, that on some level that you're gathering in a space with other people and you're watching it live. I mean, I hear what you're saying, though. Obviously, there are barriers of cost and of access. People don't live always in New York or can't visit. In the intro, it goes back to the irony of what we were discussing in the intro of Substack. funding print magazine companies to make a zine. It's like, hey, live theater, it's a magical, special thing. You have to be in the room to experience it. Feel it, hear somebody cough in the room and the tension and all this stuff. What if we just filmed it and you could watch it on your phone instead? You're being killed by the very thing that you're trying to kill. Yeah, that's it. it's a real balance between yeah exactly like access and then kind of like diluting what is so sacred about the art form yeah but i think i think it's also that people don't i think there's more people than ever that don't want to be in the room sadly yeah like i think there are people you know what i mean i think there are people that are interested in all this stuff but they've because of covid and our phones they've turned into freaks who don't want to do it yeah Or can't. They can't afford it. Things are so fucking expensive nowadays. Who can afford a $300 ticket to go to Broadway? Who can afford a $100 ticket? For your play, how much does a ticket cost on average? The lowest, I think it starts around $70, $69, and it goes up to $200-something. It's a lot.

Especially if you're going with someone, you know, like I can. Oh, you think I'm paying? Hell no. We're going. Hell no. Oh, no, no, no. So is this like a plus one situation? I mean, but like 250 bucks, like that's a that's like a Lollapalooza ticket or something like that. Right. I know. So it is tough, but. I hope to one day be more of a patron of the theatrical arts. I live in a suburb in Los Angeles, so there's not a ton of that going on. Right. Unless you're into the Armenian place. Oh, man. Yeah. I got to get more into that. The Armenian theater, there's something to explore there. No, but I think that there is. I mean, the monetary thing is, I mean, that's like what the big argument, like Rolling Stones doing this musicians on musicians, like their version of actors on that, like the Hollywood Reporter thing. Yeah. And, you know, today it's Jack Antonoff and Haley from Paramore. he's complaining about ticket prices for shows right it's like bro bro but you benefit from that like i don't know yeah how much can you complain when you're the one making the money you know but i i think it's also like there's just a margin of cost that these things cost and that's what it requires for a ticket like i don't know what else yeah i don't know how else you do it like you said yeah i mean that's the thing i guess Elsewhere, there's like government subsidy. I mean, what's interesting to note is that the three shows that recouped, the three musicals that I mentioned earlier that recouped, which were like MJ and Juliet, you know, they all benefited from government subsidies around COVID. So they were all given like these big sort of PPP loan bullshit. They're on their PPP loan. They kept the money. They didn't even go to the mall. But, you know, in Europe, it's like, you know, yeah, like people are not expected to pay like hundreds of dollars to go see. a play because like the government helps support it they help support the development of it so it's not all in the consumer we don't care about we don't care about the arts here bro you take that shit somewhere else we get we don't unless they're on bravo we don't really care about the arts yeah that's my art when i learned about i mean when i first when i was younger and i was in the music business and i learned about that like all of my favorite canadian

bands albums were basically paid for by grants and that the labels had grant writers on staff to like make sure i get my feist and broken social scene on time i was like damn that is sick like i didn't know that was yeah i'd never heard of that and the country makes their radio stations play a certain percentage of canadian artists that's right dobson dobson lives because of the laws yeah they call america nationalists yeah but i didn't crazy i guess i just didn't realize that that was like how much that benefits a play. I just, it's so un-American in so many ways. Yeah. And there's like, you know, yes, there's like CanCon and there's also like Quebec, you know, also has safeguards around. I mean, and, and huge support for its own kind of national. Well, they got, Oh yeah. With a fake, when you're fake France, you got to protect that shit. You got to protect that shit. Nothing worse than the Quebecois. I mean, honestly, it's like, thank God. We'd be, we'd be all like. You know, we'd be so conservative in Canada and we'd have we'd have just nothing but conservative governments if it wasn't for Quebec. I think they're like such an engine of culture in our country, too. It is. Especially so good. It's still cheap to it's still cheap to live there. But I mean, I want to you. You grew up in Ottawa. I did. Yeah. Suburbs of Ottawa. Yeah. All right. So what was your awake? What was your awakening in Ottawa? Like, what did you see? Were you like, you know what? This maybe ain't for me. What was the name of the suburban town that you grew up in? It better be funny. Oh, I was in, I grew up in Beacon Hill North in Ottawa. Oh, that just sounds nice. That just sounds like Boston. It was lovely. I mean, we went to like a lovely like arts high school there too. And I was like, it was a nice, it was a nice like adolescence, you know, like just, but I feel like there is something, yeah, you're like when you're a teenager. your experience so much of your experience of like culture is just online you know and like what well how how old are you are i mean you're younger than us are you in your 30s uh yeah i am i'm probably not younger i'm i'm 37. okay we're i'm 42 yeah i mean okay generally the same age but you're you you grew up that age difference is enough where you like have the internet since you could remember basically yeah yeah yeah exactly you're kind of imagining a space for yourself that is

sort of not where you are you know you're like seeing yourself in a larger city or you're kind of watching a lot of my the early theater i watched was just online just like seeing people do crazy shit like oh man i wish i could do that but like there was no context for it where i came from who put you on in general though were you discovering this yourself or was it like a teacher or your parents or like who groomed you into the theater honestly just public school really yeah just like just doing a play my first my first role that i played uh golem in the hobbit in grade six i was and actually this was kind of the birth probably of a few different you know, inclinations in my life. I was, like, in, like, a wetsuit. Yeah, I was going to say, the Gollum to leather pup play pipeline is very real. Can you still do a little Gollum? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm just living it every day. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like, yeah, it's like a skin-tight wetsuit slathered in petroleum jelly. I mean, it was a great role. It really was a good role for me. Okay, have you ever been in the basement at Basement wearing your little pup costume and you just break into a little Gollum? Trying to lure someone into a corner? Yeah, exactly. Into the catacombs, into the cave. Yeah, my precious. It's very cool, though, that you just sort of came on to it. I found it yourself. One cock ring. To rule them all. I thought Gollum was ugly. Is that part of it or no? Yeah, I mean, maybe I was cast for that. I don't know. No, no, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying you were miscast. Chris, it's a roundabout way of saying you're way too hot to play a gremlin troll. I don't know. I had a lot of acne back then. I don't know what you look like in sixth grade. I was fat, so I don't know. I can't talk about it. anybody else golem was snatched to be clear and to be fair golem golem's bmi was treacherous oh that's good okay so you well i guess speaking of basement uh you are you are a member of the of the new york city rave scene i am i am okay community basement is my okay you're a basement spot actually yeah i feel like that's kind of where i'll probably be

Tonight or tomorrow. Okay, is basement quarterly or is it weekly? Yeah, it's weekly. They have weekly, like every sort of, I think, Friday, Saturday, there's something going on. Yeah, it's a great space. And this is the one that moves, correct? Or it's in the same space every time? No, yeah. So it's this kind of warehouse space in East Williamsburg. Yeah, it's great. It's a great spot for techno. It's sexy. I love the kind of cruising spaces they have there. It's got great programming. When you say cruisy spaces, these aren't identified as such, but there's corners, let's say. There's shadows that sort of allow. Okay, got it. Yeah, there's like an area called the catacombs. Oh, so we've recreated the catacombs. Bushwick. Okay, got it. Could you throw on your theatrical cap for a second? Describe the smell of the catacombs, if you could. Depends on how late in the night it is. I see. The sun is not up yet. Let's call it 315. Definitely musky. A little bit feral. Yeah, definitely a lot of bodily fluid smells for sure. Some more pleasant than others. That's the problem with fluids. Some are better than others. That's the problem. Okay, how welcoming is this space to straight people? Very, very, yeah. That's bullshit. He's like, very, if you're willing to go into the catacombs, it's super open. It's very. What about straight women? What about straight women? Hell no, get out. I mean, you know. It's a waste of dick right there. I really can't. The capacity is 500. That's funny. Get out. You know, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, look, you can ask Nicole Kidman. That's where they shot the baby girl party sequences. Oh, yes, yes. Where in, you know, she loved it. She had a great time raving there. I bet you that was the scene of the film for me. That was good. Yeah. That was good.

Not for my wife. She likes some other different scenes involving walking on the floor like a dog. Woof-woo. Don't woof-woo. Is he one of the greatest gay baiters of all time? Because I remember I saw his first movie, the one where he played beach rats. Beach rats, yeah. And I was like, oh, this is something. And then I feel like he really knows what he's doing to keep both sides satiated, let's say. Yeah, he's... beautiful i mean you you know when you meet various actors in person you're kind of like okay there's like an on-screen glow up that happens but when i met harris in person i was like oh you were stunning yeah yeah some of them i agree i mean i've been disappointed many times and then when you're surprised you're like oh hell this delivers on the promise this is great yeah yeah we were supposed to have him on the pod but i think the timing didn't work out so well with his press and everything but hopefully he'll come back on hopefully he's listening to this And he's getting our bat signal. You know, speaking of, like, gorgeous, sexy man, you guys should see the movie Pillion. And, you know, that's a great movie with Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melian. It just came out. It was a can earlier. It was directed by this guy, Harry Leighton. It's great. You'll be hearing about it more if you haven't. It's about this kind of, like, sub-dom relationship. And I'm hard. Alexander Skarsgård plays, like, a... head of a biker gang. The film was just at the festival here, the New York Film Festival. Anyway, hilarious and hot. Skarsgård, ever since he wore those boots, I feel like I've seen a new side of it. That's why he was wearing those boots. He was wearing those cans for this movie. Yeah, he knows what he's doing. Yeah, he knows what he's doing. Oh, okay, I see. I'm sorry. I remember him wearing, like, Tom of Finland t-shirts and shit on the press tour. So that makes a little... Okay, I didn't realize what the movie was about. Now I remember all of the looks. That's his movie. A directionless man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive. Okay, so Alexander is the dom. Yes.

Thank God. You scared me for a minute there, Jordan. Scandi Daddy. Scandi Daddy. Okay. Oh, God. And do you like the guy that he's doming, or is it more just the Skarsgård show? A great actor, yeah. Not talking about the acting abilities, my friend. I'm looking at Harry Melling. I mean, he sells it. He sells it. He's a Dudley Dursley from Harry Potter. what a what a what a human new dotty wow that's actually i i feel like all right so you where do you stand in the role of a lifetime alexander's gonna fuck him until his eyes go back to normal what is your stance on straights playing gay i i think best i think best man for the job we got to give it to them if they're willing to do it you know yeah i think i think to an extent i think to an extent i think uh The fact that we see, like, so few gay men being cast in gay roles, like, in really kind of great media leading gay roles, I think is sort of frustrating. Yeah, like, do I want to kind of, like, you know, police casting based on, like, people's personal identity? No, I think that's, like, a kind of shitty world to live in and makes for shitty art. But I do think that there is, like, a balance that's not quite been struck or found, right? I don't know. And it feels, it does kind of... leave a bad taste in my mouth a lot of the time to like oh cool like josh is playing a gay character again or like you know paul's playing a gay character again you know or like oh oliver humanas has cast only straight people again like for his gay movie or his gay tv show well what about when when a when a straight person is playing a gay character but we all know that this person is actually gay like a pedro pascal for example exactly yeah i mean is that better or does that make it worse oh yeah i mean i guess i i get why pedro has to stay in the closet but it is frustrating it is frustrating i mean it's like and it's so funny to see like middle america be like oh god look at him touching these women inappropriately i'm like well i guess you got it

I guess you've got to deal with that discourse if you're going to stay in the closet. That's my favorite. That's my favorite. That's my favorite. Like, oh, these women, these People magazine readers, I guess, aren't really clued in to what's going on if that's going to offend them. But I think that's the whole beauty of it. It helps us insiders feel superior over the regular person. That was a joke. But when I was younger, I would always wish that somebody who so clearly seemed to be... in the closet and and gay i was like i just wish they would just come out so they could be free and everything yeah and now that i'm older and i have a little more you know wisdom about the nuances of everything you know it's it's also so hard for some people and you know it's truly impossible and millions of people have gone to their grave never openly coming out totally like would he be would he be cast in marvel movies which have to be sold first of all to yeah yeah middle america but also to china to yeah you know the gulf like etc etc yeah i mean i don't know are yeah like do we see gay men as leading men very there are very few like openly gay leading men i mean you have people like coleman you have andrew scott you know uh obviously um we got lee pace i'm a big coleman head i love cole i think he's so good yeah i mean i i mean coleman's awesome yeah i mean it's just it is sad though that there isn't i mean ben wishaw has been holding down that fort for a while too i mean he's but like like in terms of like big like anchors of like huge franchises you know like there are very few examples of like oakley gay men who are being afforded those opportunities yeah neil patrick harris isn't gonna he's not taking roles away from the rock i'll take i'll take a third i'll take a third tier gay actor over fucking ryan reynolds like let's get we can switch this shit up real quick real quick but i think do you think that's obviously that's years of you know uh issues that we're not going to unpack here in many ways. But do you think there's still sort of like an agent manager, like, let's not do this because it will affect your career conversation that feels sort of antiquated? Absolutely. Those conversations are happening for sure. Absolutely. I think it's better. I think things are, you know, there is some progress, although it's not linear. I think we're going to probably go into a period of back.

tracking like when homer goes back into the bushes it's gay guys going back into the closet so they can keep working so is it so like for example like someone's agent would be like do we have to go to dinner with mel ottenberg again like you're you know like i don't know it's affecting our callbacks a dinner with mel i would i would i would do dinner with mel than to start a marvel movie but that's you know of course of course but no i Yeah, for sure. There's definitely there's definitely those calculations for sure happening, you know, or like, you know, as tricky and as treacherous and tricky as it all seems, I guess, on the other side of the coin, you know, or the three of our short lives, the amount of progress that has been made in this specific category over the court, you know, compared to the course of the entire human existence. I think it's a lot of great growth just from me being a kid to where everything is now. I think it's something that should be celebrated. And I think we're only years away from having openly gay superhero movies. I would say in two, three years. Well, Ellen set us back a little bit, but I think we're still making steps in the right direction. I do. Yeah, I do too. I think it's important to acknowledge that while also, you know, I think. i'll always remain a bit of a cynic by nature but i but i i hear you i hear you and i think i'm not trying to score one for the straights i'm just saying obviously we're not uh we're not so out of the woods that we should start popping the champagne but to pull back you're in the position though to actually do something you know what i mean like like everyone in your in your play is gay or trans yeah like you're able to actually do something where we just sit here and talk you know what i'm saying no we platform we do platform we we we platformed andy cohen a couple years ago he needed us you know i think i think the space that i'm occupying though is like i i'm kind of like making work first and foremost for queer people and if like straight people and other people are into it then that's awesome but like i see a lot of i mean i don't i don't blame

queer artists who are trying to make work for the mainstream and who are kind of trying to like, you know, sell it down the middle. That's cool. You know, I don't know how much I'm going to personally be like changing the culture of Hollywood. No, I just, no, I just, no, I just mean you, you are doing it. Like whether you're, you're walking the walk, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Whether that changes the culture of Hollywood or not. You're walking the walk, we're baiting the queer. It's not a competition of who is doing what or who's doing more, but, but I see what you mean. I see what you mean. Yeah. And that's like. you know i think that i think the actors who stay in the closet also deny themselves the the great gift of just being part of this extraordinary multi-generational conversation and community and like and having fun and just being yourself you know like these things like you know not always having to like call your publicist after you're spotted out at dinner with your boyfriend slash your roommate. I think that's kind of a shitty way to live. That's my sober coach. What do you mean? That's just my sober coach. I've never fucked that guy. What do you mean? It makes you want to open that birdcage and let that boy fly. Some people like the cage more. Yeah, that's true. The gilded cage. The gilded cage, mama. You had a recent downtown wedding is that true how long ago did you get married speaking of of wonderful openly gay actors i married uh brandon flynn i bet you're i bet you're open about it i bet you're real open about it yeah we're open okay you and brandy got married last year yeah we got married actually almost exactly this this time last year like like this week was our anniversary it was great yeah we were uh You know, we did it at St. Mark's, which is this, you know, church right beside our house, which was this, you know, it's like this awesome space that has hosted, you know, so many different cultural kind of events over the years. I mean, it's like we're like Patti Smith did her very first like punk poems and like we're like the Black Panthers operated out of the 70s. And it's a cool kind of cultural space and poetry projects there. Anyway, so we got married there and, you know, just with all of our friends and family. Very, very kind of like.

as much a celebration of our circle of friends and community now let me let me in this situation what are the what's the discussion behind the scenes about who's wearing yeah we don't want to talk about community for your wedding bitch yeah we wore leather our our friend uh our friend ludovic uh not hurtado but uh saint saint sernan ludovic uh as opposed to ludwig um yeah ludovic uh he uh yeah designed us these like leather pieces which were very cool brandon was wearing this like leather killed it was fun it was just like kept it fun kept it kinky okay so it was i see it was complimentary but the same designer so there was a exactly okay when you say when you say pieces are we talking like a tuxedo a vest or does it have ears on the hood like an animal would is there a tail involved it felt it was kinky yeah i mean it was yeah it was like i was yeah like I mean, actually, I had boots that were kind of giving Skarsgård's boots a little bit, to be honest. We were touching knee. We were touching knee. We were. We were touching knee. You know, doing our stuff. Yeah, I had real ambivalence about the idea of marriage. I'm like, is this for me? Do I even agree with the idea of marriage? I mean, I have found my own way into it, and there's a lot of things I really love about it. I also think that, like... living in america you really are kind of like forced into certain kind of legal protections around like health and like state be able to stay in this country with the person you love and like all these kinds of things so there's you know we are fundamentally still like a society oriented towards the couple yeah especially if especially if one member of the couple has like a real job with insurance looking you know what i mean it's it's helpful for everybody at a certain age in certain societies a single person is looked down upon more so than a coupled person what is wrong with this person that they haven't found a couple you know yeah which is crazy right then but i mean i yeah i guess that is true i'm talking about for straight people i know this is not in your world i mean i guess that's yeah but i think um

But, yeah, the marriage has been wonderful. I mean, like, you know, it's hard. It's, like, work. But also it's, like, so extraordinarily rewarding. And, yeah, I mean, I'm deeply in love with Brandon. So it's been great. And, you know, we live in the East Village. He's a real cutie. You bagged yourself a good one, my friend. He's definitely a good one. What is the – I mean, I feel like you do sort of a lot. But now that this thing is kind of running, what do we got on the slate? Like, what are we working on now? Yeah, well. I have a novel coming out, being published by FSG next year, which I'm excited about. Just like deep in the copy edit for that right now. And I am, it's been also already announced by a filmmaker. I'm making a film. that we're shooting soon, um, called Rapture. It's a, like a medieval body horror film starring Kit Conner, uh, Manu Rios and Will Poulter and a few others, which we can't announce yet, but some, some great, really great ensemble. And, uh, yes, some gay actors playing gay characters. Imagine that. Hard to believe. I know, but well, what is the, what is the, so what, how long did that? take like the the movie like what how long when did we write it it feels like are you just directing or did you write it too i wrote it okay i'll be directing it uh i i wrote it pre-pandemic so starting like probably 2018 so that's how long this has been sort of wow being pieced together i know it's a long long long process and you also you wrote a book called the listeners and then that was turned into a tv show directed by our friend janixa who but it was only in the uk not in the us too gay for america what's the deal i mean yeah that it's yeah definitely not i mean it's a it's a weird show not not particularly gay but it definitely it stars rebecca hall who's uh just just for me such a kind of icon um and i think for many others who i mean she's just One of the greatest actresses. Genexa, such an honored work of her. Beautiful. Genexa Bravo. Damn, she's married to Morgan Spector? Yeah, Rebecca's married to Morgan Spector. Power couple. Speaking of guys that got to come out, Jesus. I think, once again, he knows what he's doing, is what I would say to that. He has a captive audience. He wears a lot of mesh tank tops for a straight guy, Jordan. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're such a...

Awesome couple. But they, yeah, so it was Rebecca and this, this, this kind of weird story about this woman who begins to hear this like low hum that nobody else can hear, not her family or, you know, or any of her coworkers and begins to kind of unravel her life. And we shot that. It was a four part. series that uh we made for the bbc so it was aired yeah in the uk but hopefully some friends states i will be able to see it one day who knows yeah i get my brit box subscription so i'll be able to i'll be able to queue it up that's i mean that's that's a lot we're in talks with movie that's a lot of plates to be spinning but how how many shoot days and where are we doing the movie we're shooting this movie in hungary um and they gave the tax break over there huh they do have good you know it's like so many of these particularly period pieces they're shooting over there, like a lot of these dragon movies. Just because you can make it look like that pretty easily. Yeah, they've got some amazing locations and also some just incredible... craftspeople there were working with this uh real master like of prosthetics and makeup named Ivan Pahornak who did uh Ari Aster's Midsommar and he did like the Alien vs. Predator and he's just like a real gore master so I'm very excited to be working with him I poked a guy last night called the gore master Do you meet him in the catacombs? Gore master set at basement. That's literally what I was going to say. That's actually really interesting. Okay, so Hungry, and you're going to be there for what, like 40 days or something? Yeah, probably around that long. I used to actually, strangely enough, I actually lived there for a couple of years. The guy I mentioned earlier... James was doing a PhD in Budapest. So we lived in Budapest for a bit. Budapest, I've never been, but everybody, I've never heard a bad thing about it. Yeah. I mean, it's an extraordinary city. I mean, it's like too bad the country's ruled by Victor Orban, who's this like, you know, proto-fascist nationalist. Can't win them all. You know, can't win them all. You can't win them all. He actually kicked out the university that James was studying. What do you mean kicked out? Like, we're done here? It's a long story.

The university was, yeah, it was founded on an endowment by George Soros, who's like, you know, the bed noir of Hungary and Orban. I mean, so they, yeah, they literally. So it was a little bit, it was a personal, it was a little personal. It was a personal vendetta, yeah. It was a personal political vendetta, for sure. It was very Trump-y on. For sure. Well, I wanted, lastly, I wanted to talk, I've seen the phrase pup play, pop up. on my corners of twitter lately more so it's it's i feel like it's trending up just a wee bit in the last maybe 30 40 days okay and i i know i can imagine you know the obtuse angles of what it contains and what it means but it seems like you are a player in the space so if you could explain it to a couple of straights that would be great yeah yeah speak for yourself i know all about it okay No, I'm joking. Well, one straight on the pod, sorry. Carry on. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, on its essence, it's, you know, about someone putting on a mask that resembles a... A dog. And I mean, mine is like a kind of latex pup hood, but there's like some made of neoprene, some made of leather and just about kind of entering a different kind of headspace. We are not in your own head. You're not worried about your mortgage or your, you know, your rent or your grocery bill. You're just like in this like kind of playful animal headspace. Likewise, how straight people wakeboard or mountain climb. Exactly. Flow state. Yeah. And you can just, you know, be. other than yourself playful and and it's it's a bit silly i think you know in some ways like a lot of fetish is about kind of embracing the fact that you look ridiculous and kind of having the confidence to be like but you know what i feel awesome or i don't care or like that's kind of part of it is just like being in this yeah this kind of other headspace for a while i love to wear my putt mask like my latex hood when i'm raving i love it i love to sort of like how it kind of locks me in and you know if i'm like coming up on a pill. I just love kind of like being in this, I don't know, this sort of other headspace.

I guess having the mask on, you're already in a bit of a K-hole, just in terms of your clothing, and then you put drugs in the music. So when you have the mask on, you are anonymous. People can't see your face and tell who you are. People can't say, that's known playwright Jordan Tannehill. They're just like, here's another guy in a mask. Yeah, it changes how people relate to you in interesting ways. I think it's a very ancient human instinct to want to... do psychedelics, be in a dark space, listening to like rhythmic music, donning a mask. Like these are the fundamentals of ritual that we've been engaged with thousands and thousands of years. And I think there's a real draw to that for me. I think for a lot of people, that's the rare space for me. Okay. How much, how much of your time in the mask is on two feet versus all fours? in the style of a dog me most of the time is on on on two feet but yeah i love guys who are just like getting right into the role play you know like There are some people who really commit to the doggy of it all. They have a great bark. They have a tail dildo. They have paws. Oh, wow. Can I just say you have a great bark? There are some guys who have a great bark. Tail dildo is a nice touch. That's fat form and function right there. It really completes the look. Can I ask, not to get in the weeds, but as far as the mask goes, is it a zipper closure over the mouth? And eyes as well? Zipper closure of the mouth, no. Over the mouth, there's a little cock-sized hole for convenience. It's a bit small, to be honest, for everyone. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for saying that. It'd be small for you, Chris. It makes everyone feel so tight. But yeah, it's a bag zipper. A lot of them, like the kind of... The most frequently seen hoods, I feel like, online and out in public are the neoprene ones. We've all seen those almost kawaii-style cute neoprene hoods or whatever. Not quite kawaii, but they're kind of animated. They feel like a cartoon character almost. I like that. They create a kind of playful space. I don't know. It's not quite my headspace when I'm in it. I kind of like just the black sort of solid.

poured latex look, but yeah. Yeah, we all have our flavors. To each their own. I like latex better, too. It feels more traditional. Yeah, yeah. I love being in a latex suit. Second skin, you know, it's great. It's kind of a cool vibe, although very, very hot at a rave, very sweaty. How's the breathability? Yeah, no breathability. No breathability. Okay, so then when you're all done, you come home from basement at 7 a.m., you had your bacon, egg, and cheese, and you go home, you finally zip out of that suit, take a cold shower. You've got to feel amazing, right? Amazing, and you just leave that latex to soak with some dish soap in the shower, and then, you know. You're all ready to do it next weekend. You got the used latex with the Miss Myers just soaking in the bucket. Yeah, that's how you do it. When you were still a youngster, would your mom have to wash it and hang it out for you for the next day? Yeah, I would hang up my pub hoods after school. pack my lunch my hood i miss that you know i know my god that's too good that's too good okay well jordan thank you for uh taking the time to chat with us if you live in new york your play prince faggot runs till november what's the end date uh november 30th november 30th all right so you got a month and a half to go check it out everyone says it's fantastic i hope to go see it i'll be in new york a couple times over the next month so Thank you so much, guys. I'll try to swing by. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Yeah, I had a lot of fun. your escape. It's America's number one for a reason. Cayman Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Cayman Jack Beverage Company Chicago, Illinois.