Jason Diamond, "Searching for John Hughes"

Like many troubled adolescents, Diamond found solace in the movies. Now a sports editor at Rolling Stone, Diamond is still grateful to John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink for showing him that kids who were different could still be cool. Diamond’s alienation stemmed from a troubled home life with an abusive father and a mother who abandoned him; he later became clinically depressed and homeless, all the while drinking too much. But amid these bad decisions, Diamond struggled to pay homage to his favorite director by writing his biography. This account of his failed efforts to produce a book is by turns funny and moving as Diamond recalls his often plastered twenty-something self, his long days in coffee shops, and the sometimes outrageous lengths he went to gather facts.

Diamond is in conversation with Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World and Other Stories.

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Produced by Michael A. Kowaleski