[powerpress]
From an early age, we each inherit a story about the life we’re going to lead.
We spend years reaching for it. Then reality intervenes.
And perhaps you come to see the story was never quite about you. It’s humbling. But there’s a strange grace on the other side of it, an unexpected liberation, if you’re willing to let it go.
That collision – between the self we conceive and the reality that eventually arrives – is the ground Danny McBride has been excavating for 30 years.
Danny’s the writer, actor, and producer behind Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones. He co-founded Rough House Pictures and built a creative home in Charleston, far from the gravity of the studio system. Thrilling Tales of Modern Men is his first collection of short stories.
The timing is uncanny. The book arrives amid our current reckoning with the crisis of masculinity – the epidemic of loneliness, the erosion of meaning, the men acting out over something they’re sure was taken from them.
But Danny isn’t chasing the moment. He’s been writing this man since long before the culture caught up and gave it a name. To him it was never news. It was always just the human condition.
His men are all convinced they’re the hero of the journey. The last thing any of them sees coming is himself.
On deck:
- The Myth of Being Special & the Liberation of Letting It Go
- The Rambo-to-Geico Generation & the Inflated Self
- Why the Only Real Antagonist Is the Man Himself
- The Manosphere & the Old Lie That the Answers Live Outside You
- Film School, Charleston & Building Outside the System
- Horror, Comedy & Reading as an Antidote to the Screen
For those who prefer a visual experience, the conversation is available on YouTube. As always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The particulars differ for each of us. But that gap – between who you imagined you’d become and who you turned out to be – I know it well. I suspect you do too. That’s what makes this more than comedy. Enjoy.
Peace + Plants,
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- Connect with Danny: IMDb
- Book: Thrilling Tales of Modern Men: Stories
- Article: Danny McBride Has More to Say About Insecure Men
- Watch on YouTube: CBS Mornings: Danny McBride on why he chose to write about masculinity in his new book
- NY Times: Danny McBride Thinks Men Learned All the Wrong Lessons From Movies
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