LEMON: the third time I told it it got way more dramatic, because I knew that the first two times I told it, like, nobody liked it?...so I said this, and she cried, and left the room...
ISFAHAN: the story didn't screen well, so you went to rewrites?
LEMON: Yeah! I mean, I genuinely did. Like, I don't know if that's a bad thing on my part but I do do that, I do do that with anecdotes where I don't actually know with an anecdote that I've told for five years, how much of it is true.
ISFAHAN: Sure.
BOOTS: That's not unique. I've got a handful of those too.
I was talking with a friend the other day about this
excellent piece ("The Marineland Dreamland") from The Walrus a few years ago, written by a guy who was so concerned with his anecdote's truthiness that he did an investigative journalist piece on his own memory. It feels relevant to the quoted dialogue above.There's a companion podcast piece
here, if you feel like the essay ends abruptly.