Why you should watch The Lowdown, and Fruit Fly is the hot new novel

In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game. Ryan's style is really gunned and go. And in less than a minute, it slipped away. But he continued to chase the high. Ryan James Wedding. He controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. I'm Michelle Shepard and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, the most wanted Olympian. Available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Okay, so the lowdown was one of my favorite shows of last year. This is the noirish comedy starring Ethan Hawke who plays a citizen journalist who is trying to play both detective and activist. The second season of lowdown just dropped and I'm still here wondering how this show has stayed so under the radar. I'm Rad time of play sitting in for Eliminate up my mood. This is Kabooshin, Rachel Ho is here, Merrick Tyler is here. Welcome to show y'all. Hello. Hello. So, you know, before we get into the new season, Rachel, I do want to talk about the first season because I mean, I think you agreed with me that like this was one of the most underrated shows last year. Can you break down what that show was about? Sorry, so we got Ethan Hawke as Lee Ray Bond. He is a the truth story of Tulsi's basically he's a journalist, like you said, but he's fighting the good fight, you know, in season one, he was going after the wealthy elites, specifically the Washburg family. He exposed them in print, you know, my man, he's just looking for the truth. This guy is really just looking for the truth. The show, it's very much new new war. It's got dark comedy beats as well to family drama at times too. I mean, it's like it's a vehicle for Ethan Hawke to just do the absolute most and it's absolutely amazing. And it's also got like Keith David, Tracy Litz, Canateel Horn, Kyle McLaughlin, Cody Lightnings in it. Tommy Lee Jones is in this season, like it's an amazing cast and amazing show. Yeah, in the new season, I should clarify Tommy Lee Jones is not the pretty, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm married. I mean, look, Sterling Harjo, we should note is the creator of Reservation Dogs, which is such a brilliant series, but also such a groundbreaking moment for representation. It was surprising to me that then Sterling Harjo decided to follow that up with a show about a white guy, who of course, as Rachel said, calls himself a true story. But I mean, how do you see that maybe these two shows do speak to each other or mirror each other? Well, you see it in the first shot of the very first episode in season one, there's a hand off between Paulina Alexis character Jack from Reservation Dogs, it gives a slight nod. She just walks by Ethan Hawks character. So there's a bit of a hand off there, but I'm going to say the very first season, or the very, or reservation dogs had a character, a knife man. He was the guy who goes, yeah, yeah, and love him, but he was an olive branch for non-indigenous viewers to get on board because they're like, oh, that's, that's a character. That's the Hollywood indigenous person that I know. And he was a spirit character, like he was like, he was appearing to the main characters as a spirit from their past. So non-indigenous people were like, oh, like, I, that's a character that I get. These other characters I don't really know much about. So that was their olive branch there. He re-did that Sterling re-did that, I think, with the spirit character in low down, which is with William, no, what's his name? No, Dale Washburn. Right. But he's now the new spirit character, but he's a white guy who I think is the olive branch or the will of branch for indigenous folks to go, okay, but here's an ally in the form of a spirit character who's my onboard to this white person story. And you know, I want to latch on to how you describe it, Dale Washburn as an ally as a spirit character. Because, you know, I think one of the things that, you know, when I say like, it was surprising to me that Sterling Harjo decided to make a show about a white guy. But I love that, you know, that then gives him the opportunity to challenge white savior tropes, especially in this very imperfect ally that Ethan Hawke is playing. Did you see that? Did you appreciate that aspect of the character? Yeah, I did. I actually loved it. I was like, look at that white guy just being all nervous around the indigenous folks. He was always scared to be in, like, he always needed company in the indigenous environments. Like, they go to a community event and he's like, no, no, no, two is indigenous friend. You got to come with me and they dressed up like in a really nice jacket. He was just really, really uncomfortable. But in the non-indigenous environments, he had, he was, he was, he was like, he was very cool. He had sunglasses on his hat on. So you saw a very nervous ally trying to be an ally. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, look, we both are all three of us agree that that first season, we, we loved it, right? So let's listen to a bit of the new season. I gotta shout out a bit of the music in that trailer because this is, because both Rachel and Merrick were like bobbing along, grooving with it. And that is very much like, I think, how we, how we enjoyed the show. So that was the trailer for the second season, starring Ethan Hawke and new additions to the show, Betty Gilpin. Rachel, super quickly, can you tell us where we're at with the new season? There's another big story in this season. It does revolve around Betty Gilpin's character, her name is Ginger. She's a public defender. She had a client who was in prison. He's gone missing. And as you heard in the clip there, she's being stalked. Some guys are following her and she's trying to figure out. Of course, Ethan Hawke's character Lee, he's going to step in, he's going to try to help her. We've got some smaller storylines as well, but I say that is the big one that kind of the world is revolving around this season. And I should say, I mean, like, because, you know, the first season, while you know, these detective narratives, they do work in like kind of bigger stories. And so if the first season was about predatory land grabs, this one is very much about the prison industrial complex in terms of where it goes. And then, you know, Rachel, in terms of the new season, like, how are you feeling about it? I absolutely love it. I love the connections that it's making to season one as well. It doesn't feel too episodic to capsule. Like, they do kind of blend into one another very nicely, but yet still very distinct, right? They're still very distinct. I like that we have an expanded role for a Lee's daughter, Francis as well. I think she's amazing. It's Ryan Kira Armstrong. So great. I love her. I think I'm digging her so much in the show. It's like to me, this is doing everything that a sophomore season should be doing. Like we've got the lay of the land, we know what's going on in this world, and we're just building on top of it. We're expanding characters, expanding the world out. And like you said, exploring a different topic now, like we're going in a different way. But still holding on to kind of the general idea of like, it's injustice and we're still, he's a true story. It's a true story. So we've still got the commonalities. All right. So you're still, you're digging low down still in season two. Merrick, how are you feeling about it? Well, I have to say I have a bit of a conflict of interest with my wife on this one, because we like to binge, binge our movies. So, you know, we don't, you know, and right now, I've only watched two episodes. So I'm into it though. It's really, really good. I mean, then you've got the icon, the icon, which is Betty, I mean, when they, when they walk on, walk on screen, they just take it over. I mean, you see how fast the dialogue is between those two non-indigenous characters. They can match each other, Betty's character and Ethan's character match each other's pace really, really fast, whereas the indigenous folks talk a lot slower. So you can see this kind of like, you know, our intersection. Yeah. It is interesting how the two characters Betty and him mirror each other, even though on the surface, they seem so different, but their their drives are so similar. Rachel, I mean, look, when we get to second seasons for a lot of the shows, for a lot of different shows, I mean, it often, we often seem to sort of refinement in the second season as if the show was coming into itself. Are you seeing that in any way with this new second season for the lowdown? I don't know, refinement, I feel like they're taking notes, like they've taken the studio notes of saying, let's maybe lighten up on the new R aspect, it's not as new R.E. this time around. It's much more comedic, I would say it's definitely strikes a funnier tone, it's a little bit more broad, not as dark, and it's, you know, there is still new R in it. It's just not as prominent, but I think the best thing has been, it really has been ginger, it's been Betty Gilton's character, just her introduction, because she turns everything on its head, because you think she's going to be one way, kind of she's, you know, speaking of transition, she is the transition from the new R, because when we first see her, she kind of has that new R revived to her, but then as you see her progress throughout the season, she's not bad at all. She is chaos, she's freaky, she's messy, she, I love her so much in the show, but I would say it's refined to an extent, but it's, I think a bit more of an expansion, because I don't think it's necessarily a refinement over the first season though. Yeah, I agree, I agree, and Merrick, I mean, you know, we should say that Sterling Harjo, his work is very singular, right, especially in the way like he kind of meander between genres, you heard all these different genres that Rachel was mentioning there, and he kind of meanders through noir and comedy and drama, and this very laid back, but very meaningful way. So for you, what, what, what do you make A Sterling Harjo joint, A Sterling Harjo joint? Well, I'm going to push back just a smidge and say that maybe not singular, I think there's an homage to, to the Cohen brothers in his work, you, he makes like where in reservation dogs the red. the reservation was a character in low-down, Tulsa is a character and when you think of the Coen Brothers, Fargo is a character. You know, anyway, so I would say what makes this sterling, a hard joe joint is how he brings community and like blows on the coals of community and brings that to the screen and I've never been on one of his sets although I am available. I would say that what I've heard is that he makes a set very safe and community and he blows on the coals of everyone around him and there's no hierarchy and you can see that come out on screen. Yeah, I mean, you know, speaking to your point like there are so many creatives who've worked on the lowdown from our side of the border like Dennis Goulet who's based in Toronto a free filmmaker who directed on the show and and Ghana Tio Horn from Ghana, Wage, they all speak highly of that communal vibe on this show. Rachel, I mean look, this show has been loved by not just us but by most critics and you know, it showed up on a lot of the top 10 lists last year and yet we haven't seen online chatter like they kind of online chatter you see what the what shows like the pit or like the Windows Bay where people are like clipping it and like talking about their favorite moments. Why do you think audiences aren't gravitating towards lowdown? I genuinely don't know like I mean when I watched the first season I really thought this is going to be big like I was like waiting for it to come out and like this is going to be a big show for the year. It's going to be the thing that everyone talks about Ethan Hock get ready for your TV awards and then it was just cricket. It's like there was just nothing. My only guess would be that I feel like because we are so spoiled for choice these days like there's just so many options to watch. The lowdown isn't as in your face and it's not as clippable as maybe some shows are like Windows Bay or like the pit. So maybe when people are faced with looking at their home screens and there's just like a million different options for you to choose from. You're not gravitating towards the one that isn't giving you that kind of immediate adrenaline rush like it's very much a show you sit with you live with and it builds around you and it's amazing when it does but it doesn't it doesn't like hit you in the face straight off the bat whereas a lot of these shows like in the very first scene they are just kind of going for it. So that's my only theory that I have. I think I mean that makes sense because as I said it is so laid back and it's such a groove that you got to get on its groove in the way. Maricopa you like why do you think a wider audience is not seizing this this brilliant show? I think it's a bit of a slow burn. I think you need to I think you need to settle into my favorite arch is the art that you kind of come back to you like two weeks later you're like oh that was really good and I think that's maybe what is happening here. Yes there's people right off the batting oil and this is awesome but for the for the wider audiences I think it's going to take a little bit for it to go oh wow this is really really good and that's what I'm hoping is going to happen. I also think that well I think that it's going to take a little bit to find its feet again so I think third season I hope it's around for third season. I you know I think you're gonna see those other characters really take it off like Cody Lighting's characters really jumping on this this you know in season two. Yeah and you see the comedic value in that and I really hope that that really happens especially his daughter or that the that character is wonderful. Yeah absolutely. She has my heart this whole show I guess I have all of our hearts and listen I feel like just having you guys on here is all we needed to now all of a sudden make this a hit because you are the truth stories that are getting the word out there so thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for being here. I am an ally. Merrick Tyler is a is Nehio and Scottish musician hailing from Treaty 6 territory you can find his solo project Asco wherever you get your music and Rachel Ho is the film editor at exclaim magazine She's in Toronto you can watch new episodes of the lowdown Wednesdays on Disney+. As a kid in the early 2000s I joined a scrappy new video site called YouTube. We were girls creating content for other girls but with our growing success came new rules from the man in charge. There was no reason to believe that anything dangerous was going on. No reason until he was taken away in handcuffs. I'm Lauren White and from CBC's split screen this is There Goes My Childhood available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. So if you're plugged into book talk and what social media is talking about on the literary scene then there's a good chance that you've been seeing a lot of this lately. To say that a book lived up to its hype is an understatement because holy cow and these characters like what? I honestly feel like this is gonna be a book that I'm gonna be thinking about for a long time. So that's just some of the many many videos you'll find online where people are raving about a novel called Fruitfly. It's from the British author Josh Silver. Fruitfly came out in the UK back in April and now the hype has consumed North America. Samuely Lyshappard recently interviewed Josh Silver for Extra Magazine. I caught up with him recently and I started off by asking him what the novel is about. It is a thriller and a literary satire about a struggling middle-aged author in England who is upper middle class. I had a coming off the heels of the success of an earlier novel and is struggling with writer's block and in order to get over her writer's block she ends up befriending a 20-year-old gay drug addict named Leo and lying about her intentions and finagling her way in there in order to write a story that is a very thinly veiled version of Leo's life. So this is a book that I would say straddles the line between elements of a thriller. You really don't know where the book is going. It constantly changes perspectives between Mallory and Leo and both of them are a bit unreliable as you learn and a broader send up and satire of exploitation in the publishing industry. Well yeah I want to talk about the author Josh Silver because a lot of us might not know who he is but he has this very kind of storied past and career. Can you talk about like where he came from and this journey that he took to arrive at this moment? Yeah, Josh is definitely a polymath. He grew up in Northern England. He started his career as an actor. He went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He graduated in 2012. He performed in the West End on Broadway at one point with Nicole Kidman and then at some point during the pandemic he had a change of heart of what he wanted to do with himself. He went back to school and got training to become a mental health nurse. He worked with teens and he told me around that same time he started writing more seriously. He came out with a string of young adult novels beginning with Happy Head in 2023 and these were pretty successful books and then this book, Proofly which came out in August, is his first foray into fiction for grown-ups. It's this first adult fiction novel. And you know, you mentioned like some of the stuff that this novel touches on because there is a lot right because we were talking about queerness, homelessness, addiction and sex work but also like looking at the as you mentioned the publishing industry and the creative process and then class and and social media even. So like how does Josh bring all that together? Like what is the connective theme in this book? I would say the connective theme is exploitation and I would say in addition to that survival. Both Mallory and Leo, I mean these are two extremely different characters from different socioeconomic backgrounds and demographics that you don't think would really have much in common but I would say the central theme of the book is actually they do. Mallory is trying to overcome writer's block without giving too much away. She is dealing with a lot in her personal life and even though she may seem very privileged on the surface, she is also doing very strange and morally questionable things to survive and that involves Leaching Off Leo's story. Leo on the other hand, he's also not this like gay little angel. He is severely addicted. He is really thinking about survival. He is constantly thinking about how do I get what I can get out of this person that I'm seeing or from Mallory for the sake of his own survival. I love this idea like navigating both of those compete dueling perspectives. Would you say that there's something that in terms of like Josh's writing in terms of his approach or like that really kind of grabbed you? I would say a couple things. I love how suspenseful his writing is. I'm a huge fan of Stephen King and in high school I loved Gone Girl. I love those kind of books where you don't actually know what you're reading and you cannot predict what happens next. Josh achieves this by alternating perspectives between Mallory and Leo and very carefully thinking like when do I zoom back and tell the whole picture and revealing things piece by piece. Another thing I really love about this guy's writing is he has a really really good and dark sense of humor, Mallory. is this middle aged woman who really understands queer culture via pop culture. So at one point, she downloads Grindr in order to catfish gay men and her understanding of what it is to be gay is informed through a little life and a heart-stopper and I'm sure it would have been heated rivalry had that come out in this universe. And she's constantly comparing herself to sleuths and movies like at one point she says she wants search her own into play her in a movie adaptation. So I think Josh does a really good job of writing what it's like to be on the outside of a community that you don't really understand but you're intrigued by and how popular culture and stereotypes inform and distort our vision of the way things actually are. That sounds I mean I love that you mentioned Gone Girl because when you were describing the book that's exactly what I'm thinking and you know and also I mean the parallels being like this because this runaway literary sensation. I mean because we mentioned off the top this book a blew up online first in the UK and then in North America since release here in August. I'm wondering when did you first get a sense that this this book had kind of broken containment? So I'm a 20-something living in Brooklyn. I spent about 90 minutes a day on the New York City subway at least and it has such an iconic cover this lime green with like this neon orange orange with a fly on it and it was one of those books that I just see everywhere out in public. And then I follow a lot of writers online who were talking about how this is just so different from the kind of queer stories that we're used to it's suspenseful it's unpredictable it's chaotic and it's truly original. So I mean why do you think that the book then is striking a chord right now like why are you seeing it everywhere? I think we're at a really unique cultural moment and I just discussed this a lot with Josh and Josh has talked about this in other interviews too where I can't speak on behalf of all LGBTQ+ experiences but at least when it comes to gay men gay men are kind of trendy right now. I would say like beginning with like call me by your name in 2017 to the smash success of heated rivalry to a little life and more literary fiction and being gay has gone from something that was stigmatized to almost something that is trendy and you want to capitalize on and I think this book very directly skewers how in this pursuit of like the commercial success of a queer tragedy a lot gets lost in translation and I compare it a lot to wonderful like prodigy writer R.F. Quang's yellow face which is about a 20 something white author whose friend who's a very successful Asian American writer dies and then the white author steals her manuscript and claims it as her own where diversity is championed as something that is cool and trendy and because we live in a capitalist society it just becomes the next thing to be exploited yeah you know I mean I want to latch on to like I mean I love the idea that you're almost presenting this as like the it's living in the intersection between gone girl and heated rivalry and also like and I would even say something like you can see everything in this mix because it is about who's conning who who's exploiting who you could see everything of course being this big box office smash in theaters right now from a studio called a 24 which is of course a very hot boutique brand and as you know right before this book hit North America a 24 landed the TV deal for fruit fly so I mean we only got like a 30 seconds left but are you excited for the potential TV adaptation of this book of course I am I love a 24 I love the risks that they take especially with young people like back rooms that I saw in the summer and you can see everything which I saw it this weekend yeah I would say I'm more excited for Josh's next book he gave me a couple hints towards what he was writing about he said it was probably going to be from the perspective of a female character and I'm just I think beyond all else I'm really excited to see what comes from this very original and culturally tuned in voice okay well you listen you go you said all the key words to make me so excited about this and joined the hype so thank you so much for being here Samuel of course thank you so much for having me Samuel Eli Shepherd is a freelance culture writer from Toronto currently based in Brooklyn the novel fruit fly by Josh Silver is out now and that's it for commotion today I'm rads I'm a play sitting in frelin me nap top my mood I'll see you tomorrow they all speak to that experience for more cbc podcasts go to cbc.ca/podcasts