Adult Dean: That's when it hit me. My dad was actually wrestling with the very concerns he thought I'd been wrestling with this whole time.
Bill: Okay. It's getting late.
Adult Dean: I wanted to tell him what was really bothering me because I knew it would put his mind at ease. But I was too embarrassed to confess my stupid, silly troubles to a grown man with real ones.
Dean: Oh!
Bill: Hey! [laughing] Hey! You got one. [laughs] All right, take it slow. Take it slow.
Adult Dean: And in that moment, my dad wasn't a Black man in Alabama in 1968 or a father worried about his kids.
Bill: Keep the rod up. There you go.
Adult Dean: He was just a man fishing. [Bill laughs] That's when I understood everything he didn't know how to say. I had a brilliant spark of inspiration that fueled me to write all night.