Last year Julia Buckley interviewed Bob Morris, author of
Bermuda Schwartz and other mystery novels.
The opening exchange:
Dave Barry called you “funny as hell.” This is a pretty amazing compliment, coming as it does from a Pulitzer-winning humorist. Do you know Mr. Barry?
Dave and I go way, way back. We first met when I was a newspaper columnist for the Orlando Sentinel and was sent out on the road to cover the 1988 presidential campaign. Dave and I were the only humor columnists covering the caucuses, primaries and conventions, which was odd because those things are just totally laughable. While all the serious journalists were listening to speeches, Dave and I would be doing things like getting drunk with Kitty Dukakis or crashing parties for high-rollers or staging mock political protests. At the Democratic Convention in Atlanta in 1992, we put up signs all over the press headquarters notifying all these serious political reporters about a demonstration by a group called “People with Boxes on their Heads.” This group consisted of me, Dave and Eric Lacetus, from the Seattle Times. We put boxes on our heads, stood in the official protest area and dozens of serious journalists showed up to ask us questions like, “What does this protest symbolize?” And we’d answer: “It symbolizes that we are people with boxes on our heads.” We made it on CNN and some of the major newspapers, and when the serious reporters found out they’d been scammed they tried to act indignant, but it was way too late for that.
Read
the entire interview.
--Marshal Zeringue
