Legendary Texas Monthly writer Skip Hollandsworth is used to working hard for a story. He’s been widely recognized as one of the premier writers of longform non-fiction in the magazine world for three decades. Many of these narratives spanned more than 12,000 words and required months of investigation, research, interviews, fact-checking, and rewriting.
For his efforts he’s received a National Magazine Award, had three of his articles turned into TV movies, and had his 1998 piece “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas” turned into the film Bernie, which was released in 2011 and starred Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, and Shirley McClaine. The film, directed by Richard Linklater, was critically acclaimed and received several awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination for Black.
Skip Hollandsworth knows that the perfect story requires time.
But his first foray into the investigative podcast world has stretched him and exhausted him in ways he could never have anticipated. Before I even asked him a question, he had something he wanted to get off his chest: “Writing a podcast takes hours! It’s ridiculous how long it takes. It’s such a time suck!”
The making of Tom Brown’s Body, which is both an eight-part podcast series and a three-part magazine story, has required the 63-year-old self-professed “old fart” to step out of [...]
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