Interview with Matt Phelan, Author/Illustrator of Bluffton: My Summers with Buster Keaton

Matt Phelan and I at his Bluffton signing - Book Expo America 2013

I had the pleasure of interviewing author/illustrator Matt Phelan about his book Bluffton: My Summers with Buster Keaton. Check out my original review here. You can find Matt Phelan on Twitter as @MattPhelanDraws, on Facebook, on Google+ and on his wonderful blog Planet Ham.

Now on to the questions!

Raquel: Could you tell us a little bit about your interest in Buster Keaton?

Matt: When I was a little kid, my brother and I would watch silent movies on my dad's super 8 projector. We had Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, but my favorites were our two Keaton films: Cops and The General (which required a few reel changes). I still think of those movies with the sound of the projector motor running.

My interest in Keaton really caught fire after Kevin Brownlow's amazing documentary A Hard Act to Follow came out (If anyone can tell me why this hasn't been released on DVD in the states, please do. I'm afraid my VHS copy might disintegrate from use). I became obsessed with Buster and tracked down all the books about him I could find as well as whatever terrible quality prints of his films I could dig up. This was pre-Internet and before Kino released all of his films on VHS, so there was a lot of poking around in used bookstores and libraries.

I was in film school at that time and I quickly realized that not only was Keaton brilliantly funny, he was the best filmmaker of the silent era period.

Raquel: That’s so wonderful that you enjoyed watching Buster Keaton films as a child! Was it your childhood fascination with him that inspired you to write and illustrate Bluffton or was there another motivation?

Matt: My fascination with Buster has always been a constant in my life. However, it wasn't until I read his autobiography My Wonderful World of Slapstick that I started thinking about writing a story about the summers in Bluffton. That was about twenty years ago. I didn't actually figure out that the main character should be a kid from Muskegon until about 7 years ago. Some stories take time (although I hope future stories won't take quite so long).

Raquel: I think it’s really interesting that you decided to tell the story through the eyes of your main character Henry Harrison and not Buster Keaton. How did you come to that decision and how did that effect the final book?

Matt: By making Henry the narrator, the reader has a way into this story. Who are the vaudevillians? What is their world like? Henry knows next to nothing about vaudeville at the beginning of the story and that is a very useful viewpoint. It helped me figure out how to tell the story. I could ask myself, "What would I do if I met Buster Keaton when I was a kid?" And I think by not having Buster be the narrator or main character, I could get a truer portrayal of him in a strange way.

Raquel: How did you want to portray Buster Keaton and how did you approach illustrating him?

Matt: I tried to be as true to him as possible. For instance, although some have argued that his childhood was near abusive (the rough act, the lack of schooling) Buster never saw it that way. So I'm sticking with his viewpoint on that matter. I've watched and read a lot of interviews with him so I was very careful in trying to replicate his speaking manner. That won't register with most readers but it was important to me. To draw him, I watched his movies with a sketchbook in hand. I found his shorts with Roscoe Arbuckle to be very helpful because he's the youngest in those. I also have photos of him as a kid. The real method is to take all of that in and then draw with that knowledge deep inside. Do the work, and then forget about it on a conscious level. My approach to illustration is not unlike an actor's approach to a role.

Raquel: Could you tell us more about those photos you have of Buster Keaton as a kid? Especially that one you found of him smiling!

Matt: The best photos of Buster (at all ages) are in a book called Buster Keaton Remembered by his wife Eleanor Keaton. There are great shots of The Three Keatons and also pictures of young Buster in Bluffton. The photograph that ends the book was something I came across completely by chance while I was on a research trip in Muskegon. I walked into a house that was having an estate sale and asked if they had anything about the Actors' Colony and Buster in particular. The woman was the granddaughter of a man who had run the neighborhood general store and he was friends with the Keatons. She rummaged around in a room and came back with this amazing photo of a smiling Buster with his father, Joe Roberts, Ed Gray and other regulars in front of their clubhouse Cobwebs & Rafters. She sold me the photo for ten dollars.

(Learn more about the photo and Phelan's research by reading his guest post at the Nerdy Book Club)


Raquel: I love that story! What kinds of research did you do on that trip to Muskegon?

Matt: I rented a cottage in Bluffton for a week in 2010. While there, Ron Pesch who is really the authority on the Actors' Colony (http://www.actorscolony.com/) gave me a detailed walking tour of the neighborhood. Ron introduced me to the current owner of the Keaton property (Jingles' Jungle has long since been taken down). He showed me the concrete wall out back where Joe Keaton carved his name years ago. Mostly, I just strolled around, staring at the lake, getting to know the feel of the place. I walked the base line of Buster's ball field and gauged how long it took to get from the Keaton's place to Cobwebs & Rafters and Pascoe's. I played with my daughter on the shore of Lake Michigan where the grand Lake Michigan Park once stood. It's not hard to see the appeal of the place.

Raquel: I think that’s a side of Buster Keaton that a lot of us are not very familiar with. What do you hope kids (and adults too!) get out of reading Bluffton?

Matt: I do hope the book will inspire interest in Buster and his work and spur readers on to check out his films (especially if they've never seen one). I also hope that the themes of friendship and finding one's place in the world resonate with readers. They are universal concerns no matter what the time period or setting.


Raquel: What are you working on now?

Matt: Right now I'm illustrating some picture books (one of which is the first I've also written). After that, I begin work on my next graphic novel which is a retelling of Snow White in 1930s Manhattan. I think I'm just going to keep writing books that require me to watch a lot of classic movies as research.

Raquel: Now, I've got to ask this question. What is your favorite Buster Keaton film?

Matt: Oh, picking a favorite Keaton film is very difficult. If pressed, I might have to go with The General. But I really love The Navigator. And Steamboat Bill, Jr. And his short film One Week is absolutely perfect. Can I just answer All of the Above?

Thank you Matt for taking the time to answer my questions!

Bluffton: My Summers with Buster Keaton
by Matt Phelan
240 pages - Hardcover
Candlewick Press
9780763650797
July 2013

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Interview with Tom DeMichael, author of James Bond FAQ

Carlos: Which are your least favorite Bond movies? Why?

Tom DeMichael: As I mentioned in my book, I find the 1967 version of Casino Royale to be intolerable - but as I also noted, it's not considered to be an "official" Bond film. Of the 23 Bond films produced by Eon Productions, my choice for least favorite Bond film would be a tossup between Moonraker and A View to A Kill. Moonraker, because I think Michael Lonsdale - despite his normally fine abilities as an actor - completely underplayed his role of Hugo Drax. Plus, the whole scene with Jaws and his newly-found girlfriend Dolly saving Bond and Holly Goodhead aboard a space shuttle makes me want to turn off the whole film at that point. A View to A Kill forces us to believe that Tanya Roberts is a geologist, villainous May Day is stronger than Oddjob - a character portrayed by a former Olympic weightlifter, and that Roger Moore - bless him - could still be a sexy and action-packed 007 at the age of 58. Both films suffered from a weak script and a general lack of creative direction and inspiration.

Carlos: Who is your favorite Bond girl? Why?

Tom DeMichael: This is a great question, dependent on whether I answer from my own feelings of attraction, or my opinion of theatrical performance. Perhaps I'll touch on both.

For my own tastes, Jill St. John from Diamonds Are Forever was a wonderful combination of stunning beauty, pure sexiness, and brains - at least in real life. With an IQ over 160, she's proved herself to be a very capable and attractive performer over the years. From a standpoint of pure beauty, it's hard to get past blonde Ursula Andress and dark-haired Eunice Gayson, both from Dr. No.

In terms of character, and portrayal in the films, I would have to say Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger gave a wonderful performance as a tough and independent woman - something unusual in the year of 1964. She was a skilled pilot, took very little guff from anyone and Blackman nailed the character.

I thought Sophie Marceau was very strong as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome. Olga Kurylenko was very good in Quantum of Solace, playing a woman who had been hurt many times and one of the few women who did not succumb to Bond's charms.

Carlos: What is the future of the franchise?

Tom DeMichael: The James Bond film franchise is very unique in the history of cinema. It's relatively unprecedented for a literary character to be brought to the Silver Screen managed by the same production team for fifty years. Certainly, you have Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan - like Bond, portrayed by different actors over the years - but none of those series were controlled in total by a single creative entity. The Broccoli family members - first Albert, with partner Harry Saltzman until he split in the mid-70s, then stepson Michael G. Wilson and soon after daughter Barbara Broccoli - have maintained the roles of producer since 1962. Today, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli continue to successfully push the buttons for the franchise. Waiting in the wings is Wilson's son, Gregg, who has been involved with the Bond films since The World Is Not Enough and was most recently an associate producer on Skyfall. It's generally assumed that he will take over the executive reins at some point in the future. But Michael Wilson is in his early 70s and Barbara Broccoli is only in her early 50s, so they have many years left before turning over the keys to the 007 offices to Gregg.

In terms of the films themselves, you need only to look at the fact that the most recent Bond film, Skyfall, brought in more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. That doesn't include Blu-Ray, DVD, on-demand, and all the merchandising. I don't think there's any doubt that James Bond will return - for many, many years to come.

Carlos: Which actor will play the next Bond?

Tom DeMichael: Daniel Craig, who has brought to the screen much of the rough and cold demeanor that Ian Fleming's original James Bond had, is contracted to star in the next two Bond films - known currently as Bond 24 and Bond 25. At 45 right now, Craig would be only near age 50 when that arrangement is completed. Seeing how Roger Moore lasted until age 58 and Sean Connery returned as Bond at age 53 in Never Say Never Again, it's not unreasonable to think that Daniel Craig could re-up for another tour of duty as Bond toward the end of this decade.

So, considering that Craig is going nowhere in the foreseeable future, the gossip still rages as to who the "next" James Bond will be. Initial thoughts have tagged Robert Pattinson - from the Twilight movies - as a possible candidate, along with actors like Christian Bale and Guy Pearce. Considering the latter two would be 45 and 50 when Craig finishes his shift, they are unlikely. Henry Cavill, only 30, has also been mentioned as a possibility and actually tested for the role of Bond in 2006's Casino Royale.

Despite their varied abilities, all six actors who have played Bond were relatively unknown, and certainly not A-list performers, when chosen for 007. Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan had made their names in television series prior to taking the iconic role, and the rest came to the table with experience ranging from print model, stage performances, and secondary roles in feature films. It's very likely that next James Bond will come from similar backgrounds.

Carlos: Do you see a JB movie filmed in 3D?

Tom DeMichael: Knowing that the Bond producers have already stated that they really don't believe the 007 franchise is suitable for, or needs to be in, three dimensions, I would think the possibilities of James Bond in 3-D are very, very slim in the foreseeable future.

Carlos: Do you see Bond continuing to use the Walther PPK?

Tom DeMichael: A flippant response would be, "Dance with the partner that brought you to the party." The Walther PPK has been most reliable, and recognizable, for the last 50 years, remembering that the puny Beretta 418 was its predecessor in Dr. No (actually the prop used was a Beretta M1934). Walther was able to convince the producers of both Octopussy and Never Say Never Again to feature their new P5 in 1983, and 007 used a P99 in three of Brosnan's films and Craig's first.

The producers made a strong statement in Skyfall by featuring a new quartermaster, yet still entrusting Bond with a Walther PPK, albeit retrofitted with a hand signature grip. Right there, I believe the Walther PPK was reaffirmed as the weapon of choice for 007.

Carlos: Which of the Ian Fleming books/short story is the next Bond film?

Tom DeMichael: Story development for Bond 24 has already been underway for three months. As all twelve Ian Fleming novels have already made it to the screen, it it's unlikely any of those will be remade in the near future. Fleming wrote nine short stories, five of which have become films, even if by title only. Portions and snippets from three of the remaining four stories have appeared in one form or another in the Bond films over the years.

When one looks at the fact that much of the source material from Fleming is now 50 to 60 years old, I would be surprised to see any major plot points and/or characters from the original Fleming catalog show up in any of the upcoming Bond films.

Carlos:  How long did it take to write the book?

Tom DeMichael: Sticking to a rigid and well-planned schedule, the James Bond FAQ - all 140,000 words of it - was researched and written in six months.

Carlos: For how long did you want to write the book?

Tom DeMichael:I have always been an avid Bond fan, ever since I saw Thunderball at the age of 10. The format that the FAQ series from Applause Books established seemed perfect for the summation of all cinematic things 007, especially considering the timing of the landmark 50-year anniversary.

Carlos: Why was Dr. No the first novel made into a film?

Carlos:  How is the order of novels/short stories made into movies determined?

Tom DeMichael: I have combined these last two questions, since their answers have quite a bit of overlap.

Fleming wrote Casino Royale in 1953. The story was purchased by the CBS television network and produced as a one-hour drama in 1954. As the author continued to write his Bond novels, much thought was given to turning them into an on-going series for CBS. When that didn't happen, producers Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed Eon Productions and purchased options on Fleming's current and future Bond stories. The exception was Casino Royale, the rights to which he had already sold (which is why it was never produced as an Eon Productions film until 2006, when alternate arrangements could finally be made. When made in 1967, the film was shot by other producers as pure parody, in order to avoid any legal wrangling with Eon.)

The reason Dr. No - the sixth Fleming novel - became the first Bond film was largely economic. James Bond was an unknown commodity in 1962. While the books had been big sellers in Britain, America knew little about 007. Studios in Hollywood were hesitant to back a film about a secret agent from England (note that in CBS's 1954 TV production of Casino Royale, Bond was an American agent, echoing the thoughts that a British agent was of no interest to American audiences.) United Artists finally took a chance, agreeing to back seven films in the series.

Thunderball, a novel adapted from an aborted screenplay Fleming had written with several others, was supposed to be the first Bond film. But when one of the other writers went to court to block the production, Dr. No was deemed to be a story that could be shot within the budget of under $1 million. When it turned out to be a big hit, budgets were increased and Fleming's stories were selected on the basis of predicted commercial appeal and potential financial success.

You Only Live Twice - the fifth film, but actually the 11th novel - was the first to really stray far, far away from the Fleming novels. With the Space Race between America and the USSR going full throttle, it was believed a story about hijacking spacecraft was superior to Japanese castles and Blofeld disguised as Dr. Shatterhand. The next film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service - the novel actually BEFORE You Only Live Twice - returned to stick close to the original story, despite the inexperienced George Lazenby replacing Sean Connery. After that, the Bond films relied on Fleming titles and very little else from books.

When Casino Royale was released in 2006, it was a pleasant return to much of the original Fleming story, featuring characters and scenes from the novel that had come out more than 50 years before.


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You can find my husband Carlos on his blog Live Fast Look Good or on Twitter @livefastlookgd . Check out Carlos' review of James Bond FAQ.

James Bond FAQ
All That's Left to Know about Everyone's Favorite Superspy
by Tom DeMichael
978157838568
Paperback
Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (Hal Leonard)
December 2012

Find the book on:
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Indie Bound
Amazon

Interview with Margaret Talbot, author of The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century

I have had the privilege of interviewing Margaret Talbot, author of the book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century and daughter of classic film actor Lyle Talbot. Check out the interview below and if you haven't heard about this amazing book yet make sure you read my review.

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Raquel: Why did you decide to write The Entertainer?

Margaret: I’d grown up listening to my Dad’s stories about his show biz career, and like most kids listening to their Dads holding forth at the dinner table or wherever, I tuned in and out of them. But as the years went by, and especially after my father died, in 1996, I thought about those stories more and more—it helped me to feel close to both my parents again, and I missed them a lot. And I realized that when you strung my Dad’s stories together, they told a bigger story about the rise of entertainment in the 20th century. I’ve always loved history, and I thought this would be a way to convey cultural history through an intimate, personal lens.

Raquel: What do you think your dad, actor Lyle Talbot, would think of the book?

Margaret: I think, and my siblings agree with me, that he would be thrilled. He wasn’t a writer at all, but he was a reader and a great story-teller, and would have been pleased as punch to see his story in book form.

Raquel:  What’s the one thing you’d like people to get out of reading your book?

Margaret: That it’s possible to make a deeply satisfying working life in a creative profession where there is a star system--and you are not a star-- so long as you have the attitude my Dad had, which was: I am lucky to be able to do the work I love. 

Raquel: What was the hardest part of the writing or research process?

Margaret: Honestly? Having to stop researching and writing it. So long as I was working on the book, I was still in communion with, having an on-going conversation with, my parents. When I finished the manuscript I felt like I was saying good-bye to my Dad for a second time.  

Raquel: The age gap between you and your dad was pretty big. I am in the same situation with my dad being 53 years older than me. How did that affect your relationship with him?

Margaret: I’m very interested to hear that, because it’s not that common—though it may become more so, as both men and women postpone having kids till they are older. In general, I thought it was a boon. My Dad was kind of gallant and old-world; I liked the connection to the past he gave me, and especially to old Hollywood glamour, but in a kinder, gentler version. And because he was a worldly person with an active mind, who kept acting and doing public appearances and interviews into his 90s, he didn’t seem all that elderly, even when he was. Possibly all that memorization you have to do as an actor, especially in the theater, which he did a lot of in his later years, helped keep his mind sharp.  

Raquel: Why did you decide to write The Entertainer not as a straight biography of your dad but as a story of your dad alongside the story of the twentieth century he lived in?

Margaret: He wasn’t enough of a star to sustain a straight biography. But that was actually an advantage in doing the kind of book I wanted to do. I didn’t have to cover every movie he made—and he made some really lousy ones!—or try and be comprehensive as you would if you were writing a biography of Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart. Also, as I say in the book, he had this Zelig-like life, where he turns up in all these facets of entertainment history: from traveling carnivals and magic shows in the Midwest in the teens, to tent theater and stock companies in cities like Memphis and Dallas in the 20s, to Hollywood, pre-Code movies and the studio system in the 30s, including helping to found the Screen Actors Guild, to the dawn of family sitcoms, with Ozzie and Harriet, the Bob Cummings show, and Leave it to Beaver (actually my brother Steve was the regular on Beaver, but my Dad did guest spots.) So his life really lent itself, I thought, to providing a narrative thread for a larger history.  

Raquel: What’s your favorite of your dad’s movies?

Margaret: I’d have to say “Three on a Match,” the ultimate pre-Code potboiler in my opinion, with a great cast: Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Warren William, and in a memorable small role, as a really vicious young hood, Humphrey Bogart.  

Raquel: Which of your dad’s stories is your favorite?

Probably the story of his screen test, which I tell in an excerpt from the book that ran in The New Yorker (but in more detail in the book!) I’m also partial to my parents’ love story.  

Raquel: My friend Bob from the blog Allure asks, “What I found interesting about Lyle Talbot, he seemed at ease as a good guy or a bady guy. Did he have a preference?"

Good point. He genuinely liked playing both. But I think as he got older, and a lot of the good-guy parts were police chiefs and commissioners (much staring with grim intensity into the camera while gripping a desk and vowing to get the perp, as in the pretty good nuclear noir “City of Fear” from 1959), he liked the bad—or at least flawed—characters better.  

Raquel: Could you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Margaret: I live in Washington, D.C. with my husband, writer Arthur Allen, and our teenagers, Ike and Lucy, who lucky for me, have always had a taste for black-and-white movies. They started with the Marx Brothers, moved on to Hitchcock, and are now watching silent movies even I haven’t seen yet (like the 1921 Swedish horror move “The Phantom Carriage.” It’s apparently really good!) We’re also lucky to live near the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Md., a fantastic art and revival movie theater, where we go often. (The theater is screening a Lyle Talbot series in December, starting with “Three on a Match,” and showing a number of other films you don’t get to see that often, like William Wellman’s punchy and amusing “College Coach.”)

 Staff writer, The New Yorker author, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century (November, 2012; Riverhead)

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Thank you so much to Margaret Talbot for taking the time out to answer my questions and thank you to Lydia of Riverhead Books for arranging the interview.

Interview with Robert S. Bader, Editor of Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales

I have had the pleasure of interviewing Robert S. Bader, the editor of the book Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales (read my review of the book here). He shared a lot of wonderful insights on Groucho Marx's writing career. Enjoy!

1) How did you become interested in Groucho Marx?

The Marx Brothers were going through a bit of a revival when I was growing up, so in the late 1960s and early 1970s I discovered them on television. I was an inquisitive kid and after seeing a couple of the films I checked out everything I could find on them in the local library and was surprised to learn that Groucho had written several books. So I became interested in him as a writer and a performer almost simultaneously. And his writing was as enjoyable to me as everything else he did from the beginning.



2) What would you like people to know about Groucho's writing career?

Groucho was mostly self-educated and sought acceptance from writers more than film critics. Writing was very important to him. He wasn't just a movie star who wrote some books and articles. He was a formidable enough writer to have succeeded at it without his other more successful endeavors.


3) Do you think Groucho's fame as a theater and film star interfered with him being taken seriously as a writer?

The most frequent criticism Groucho received as a writer had little to do with his writing ability. It was often said that he was funnier on stage or screen than he was in print. It would be hard to argue against that, but it seems unfair in assessing his written work, which is frequently hilarious. So I would agree that his status as a successful entertainer kept him from his rightful place in the world of literature. And in part because of the constraints on his time. He had a pretty successful and prolific writing career for a guy who was busy being a star for 60 years. He found time for writing because it meant a lot to him.

4) This new edition has 19 additional writings. Tell us a little about how you found these pieces and why you added them to this new expanded Edition?

Several of the additional items in the new edition were considered for the original but left out for one reason or another. I tried to keep everything in context – placing the pieces in the five sections of the book, which each deal with a certain aspect of Groucho's life and career. Many very funny and beautifully written pieces just didn't fit into any of the sections. So for the new edition I created an extra section for these difficult to categorize essays as well as a few of the items I've discovered in the years since the original publication. In the new edition I've also included a few speeches Groucho delivered. Since he wrote these without any intention of publishing them, I didn't consider them for the original edition. But over the years I've enjoyed reading them so much, I decided they belonged in the collection. Groucho's writing style is so conversational that the speeches seem like they were written for publication. My methods of finding some of this material are purely unscientific. In some cases I simply went through every page of a publication until I found Groucho's contribution. I spent many hours in libraries reading magazines from the 1930s like Judge and College Humor, which have never been indexed. As you would expect, I found a few other interesting items too. I consider it time very well spent. And the process rescued a few small treasures by Groucho.



5) Which piece in the collection is your favorite and why?

While I'm partial to anything Groucho wrote about his days in vaudeville I can say that there is one piece that stands apart for me. It was one of the things I read at a very young age that made me think the world needed a collection of Groucho's essays. "Our Father and Us" was one of the very few things written by anyone about Sam Marx, the father of the Marx Brothers. There are many articles and stories about their mother, Minnie and she developed legendary status as a result. But Sam was a very special and unique man who was so beloved that his sons considered him a sixth brother. This piece was published shortly before Sam died in 1933 and it shows a sweet and loving side of Groucho that is rarely evident in anything else he ever did. I first discovered this piece when I was around twelve years old and recall it making me more aware of the great relationship I shared with my own father, who always seemed like a friend first and a parent second.

6) My favorite piece in the collection is What This Country Needs. Could you tell us about the history of it and how Groucho came to write it?

Groucho became a very prolific writer in the early 1940s. The Marx Brothers were winding down their film career and Groucho had yet to find success on the radio, so he planned on becoming a full time writer. He wrote topical humor, quite a lot of which was published in This Week, a Sunday newspaper supplement to The New York Herald Tribune and other papers around the country. It was during this time that Groucho was involved in some collaborating with his writer friend Arthur Sheekman, who is sometimes erroneously referred to as Groucho's ghost writer. The truth is that Groucho helped Sheekman make a little money by hiring him as an editor and letting Sheekman sell a few of his own humor pieces through Groucho's agent. When he had trouble selling his own stuff Groucho and his agent let him sell the material under Groucho's name. "What This Country Needs" came to be as Groucho and Sheekman kicked around ideas and decided it would be a good time for a political piece, since it was an election year. Sheekman made some uncredited contribution to this piece but it is unmistakably Groucho's. I almost didn't include it in the book because of Sheekman's involvement and the fact that a truncated version of it appears in Groucho's 1963 book Memoirs of a Mangy Lover. But the full length original version from 1940 has so much good additional material I felt it merited inclusion.

7) What is your favorite Marx Bros. movie and why?

Like many Marx Brothers fans I love the five Paramount films – their earliest. It would be ludicrous to say that they were funnier with Zeppo, but I like seeing the Four Marx Brothers because that's how they became stars on the vaudeville stage. We get to see them as relatively young men in these films. Many people don't realize that Groucho was almost forty when the first film was made and Harpo and Chico were a couple of years older. If pressed to pick one I'd select Money Business or Duck Soup. Do I really have to pick only one? It's almost impossible for me. All of their films mean so much to me. I can say Duck Soup now and it'll be Money Business next week.


8) Why do you think people today are still drawn to the Marx Bros. movies?

Obviously they're still funny. The films were very carefully written and considering that some of them are more than 80 years old, that care paid off. There's hardly anything dated in Marx Brothers movies. Duck Soup in particular will continue to resonate as long as countries have poor diplomatic relationships. Wouldn't the world be a better place with a man like Rufus T. Firefly as president of a country? He certainly couldn't do any worse than some real presidents. Groucho's attacks on authority will remain timeless. I recently attended a double feature screening of Horse Feathers and Animal Crackers and was pleased to see a packed house that included many children laughing their heads off. It seems that each generation finds the Marx Brothers and finds them funny.


9) Tell us about your own writing career.

Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales was my first book – and as it turned out, my second book as well. (I can count the new edition, can't I?) A few years ago I wrote and produced a documentary film called The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk and I've written a few other things for television as well as several magazine articles and things like DVD and CD liner notes – usually for projects I've produced. I've also nearly finished a collection of S.J. Perelman's lost writings, which will be very similar in format to the Groucho collection.


10) What are you working on now?

For many years I've been toiling away on an exhaustive history of the Marx Brothers vaudeville and stage career. I hope to finish it in the next year or so. It's taken on a life of its own and has turned into a history of the vaudeville business as seen through the eyes of the Marx Brothers. There will be a lot of information in it that will be new to the story of the Marx Brothers – a substantial amount of material that has never been in any previous study of them. I'm also writing scripts for a weekly radio show that should debut sometime in the spring.

Thank you Robert!

Interview with Kurt Norton, co-director/producer of These Amazing Shadows (2011)

I had the pleasure of interviewing Kurt Norton, director/producer alongside Paul Mariano of the amazing documentary These Amazing Shadows (2011). This interview was conducted earlier in the year but I have been saving it to post here to celebrate the documentary's broadcast on PBS tomorrow! A big thank you to Kurt Norton for granting me the interview and for introducing me to These Amazing Shadows.

1) How did you two come to decide that you wanted to film These Amazing Shadows?

Paul (Mariano) saw an article in the New York Times in 2008 about the National Film Registry. He was struck by two things: that he had never heard of the National Film Registry and a statistic quoted in the article that 90% of films made before 1920 no longer exist and 50% before 1950 are lost forever. He called and told me about the article. I, too, had never heard of the National Film Registry. We both consider ourselves fairly knowledgeable about film, so it was quite a surprise that this very cool list of America's most important films existed and we knew nothing about it. We had just come off two documentary projects that didn't work out for a variety of reasons. We both liked the idea of doing a documentary on the movies. Seemed like a lot of fun. Paul called Steve Leggett at the Library of Congress who coordinates the National Film Registry and found out that no one had ever made a film about the Registry. We dove in without really figuring out what our story would look like. How do you make a movie about a list?

2) How did you two meet?


We met in 1985 at the Contra Costa County (California) Public Defender Office. Paul was a Deputy Public Defender and I was an defense investigator. We became friends, then discovered our common interest in filmmaking. Our first collaboration was making goofy videos for the office softball team end of season party. By a weird coincidence in those softball videos we used a lot of clips from famous movies, which we audio dubbed with our own dialogue.

3) How long did the documentary take to film and produce?


We spent over two years producing These Amazing Shadows. One reason it took that long was because we had difficulty figuring out how to tell our story. We spent a lot of time at first focusing on film preservation. As time went on our story evolved into one about the movies - its power, how it connects us all, how it reflects who we are and the joy it brings people. Another reason it took so long was because we had to find just the right people to work with: our producer Christine O'Malley, editors Doug Blush and Alex Calleros, graphic designer Brian Oakes, composer Peter Golub. We found them one by one - it was a very challenging process. The only person we had in place to began our project with was our outstanding director of photography Frazer Bradshaw. It was important to us and the project to find just the right people - people with the right temperament, point of view and artistry.

4) Working together as directors, did each of you have different roles to play or did you work side-by-side during the process?


We worked side-by-side. Sort of a two-headed monster. Having two directors is both a blessing and curse. It is a blessing because often two heads are better than one to develop ideas. Also, when one of us was feeling low energy the other was there to carry the load. The negative part is that sometimes people we worked with would get confused as to whether it was necessary to get both our approvals for decisions. It was a little cumbersome at times. Mostly it was very positive. Making a film, narrative or documentary, is a real marathon. The director has to inspire and motivate the production team - keep the whole ship moving forward. Having a partner is a real advantage because we kept inspiring each other and in turn the whole team. In terms of the interviews Paul and I took turns. By just luck of the draw Paul interviewed Rob Reiner and I interviewed Christopher Nolan. There was no grand plan as to who interviewed whom.

5) Why do you think it's important for people to know about Film Restoration and The National Film Registry?


It is important for people to recognize that our cultural heritage won't just take care of itself. We have to, as individuals and a society, make focused efforts to preserve our culture. Movies are an important part of that goal because as Robin Blaetz, one of our interview subject says, film is the art form of the 20th century. It is amazing how ideas, habits, fashions can get lost or forgotten from one generation to another. For us to connect as human beings we need to understand each other. Understand where we have come from - our connections - our common history - the good and the bad. Our lives have become so busy and technology is pushing change to the point that rather than a generation being measured in perhaps a thirty year block, it is now measured in three to four years. If that is true, then we need to protect our cultural heritage more than ever. We are lucky in this country that we have institutions like the Library of Congress. We found in the Library a part of the government that really works. That is because of the people who work there - they are passionate and dedicated. I know it sounds corny but it is true. Whether you belong to the Tea Party or are a liberal Democrat you can take pride that the Library of Congress works.


6) How did you come to select the films that were discussed in the documentary?

We, meaning our production team, had certain ideas about what films we should include in our documentary. We went dutifully about our interviews asking people about those films. But, what we found was that people told us about films they thought important. When a person tells you about a film they love or find important there is passion. We realized that we needed to follow the path being laid before us by our interview subjects. It was in their passion that we found our story. The films that Paul and I love didn't matter because we were not in front of the camera. Our interview subject took us on a great trip that we formed into our documentary.

7) How did you come to select the people who were interviewed in the documentary?

We selected people to interview that we thought were interesting - had something to say. A lot of people are wonderful, but don't really have anything to say. A good interviewer can bring out the best in anyone. Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley and Terry Gross are good examples of that. But, just bringing out the best is not good enough for a documentary. The person has to have some inherent ability to express their inner world and passion. That is what makes them documentary worthy, so to speak. Convincing prominent people to be in a documentary being produced by two guys with no discernible track record is very difficult. We got a lot of rejections from some great people. Our success in getting interviews was based on two thing: persistence and luck. We got Christopher Nolan because his daughter and our editor Doug Blush's daughter share the same piano teacher. It was through that personal connection we were able to submit our request. Dumb luck can sometimes be pretty important.

8) What do you hope that These Amazing Shadows accomplishes?

We hope that These Amazing Shadows entertains and inspires people. We certainly want to create awareness about the need for film preservation and the preservation of our cultural heritage in general. But, we've found that something else has happened that we couldn't have anticipated. We've had high school and college students come up to us after a screening and tell us that because of our film they want a career in filmmaking. We never expected that kind of response. So many people have told us how they have rediscovered the movies. Fallen in love with movies from the 1930s and 40s. Watched an experimental film for the first time in their life. Preservation is important, but it is the films themselves and how they affect people that is most important.

9) Tell us a little about your social media campaign for the documentary.

Paul and I are not in our 20s or 30s. Before this project I knew nothing about facebook, twitter, blogging, foursquare, tumblr, etc. We found with a limited promotion and advertising budget that social media was very important. We realized that there were people out there that had established connections to online communities with a shared interest. And, that those connections are very powerful. It took us a while to tap into that world. We began by just surfing the net looking for bloggers and facebook pages who we simply enjoyed reading. We learned a lot from just reading and reading. We started our social media campaign in December of 2010. We now know we should have started it a year before. It takes time to make the right connections. I am afraid that we won't really know how to have a really effective social media until 2012! Thank goodness for my 26 year old niece, Tessa Rexroat, because she really educated us.

10) These Amazing Shadows has already been screened at big film festivals such as Sundance. Tell us a little about the cross-country tour of the documentary and the reactions you've been getting so far. (as of June 2011)

In many ways distribution is harder than making the documentary. Marketing the film is so challenging because the market place is so crowded. We suffer a bit because we have been slow to develop a clever marketing hook. Film preservation is not the most exciting hook. I was at the Denver FilmCenter recently and before the screening people were coming up to me and saying, "So, this is a clip show?" Well it kind of is, but it is so much more than that. After the screening the same people came up to say how much they loved, learned and were inspired by our film. Though our marketing can be poor, once we get people in the theater they love our film. We are very lucky to have IFC behind us. They have been so supportive. They own our North American distribution rights. Even though they have guided us it is still the responsibility of the filmmakers to promote the film. Because we are the ones who have the most passion about the project. We were also lucky to be part of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. That festival is such a boost for a documentary like ours. It's short hand in our country for "a good film." Sundance began a whirlwind experience that has not stopped for almost six months. We still have a long way to go because we are scheduled to be broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens on December 28th and our DVD will be released by PBS Video in the fall. We just keep telling ourselves sleep and free time is highly overrated.

Interview with Silent Film Accompanist Jeff Rapsis

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch 2 Buster Keaton shorts and 1 full-length film on the big screen with live musical accompaniment (read more about the experience here). The music was courtesy of Silent Film Accompanist Jeff Rapsis who travels all over the Northeast of the US screening silent films and playing his own original music to them. Jeff is very talented and is providing film enthusiasts with a great service by screening and accompanying these silent classics the way they were meant to be experienced.

Jeff graciously accepted my request for an interview. In coming up with the ten questions for the interview, I enlisted some help from my fellow classic film fans on Twitter (you can follow me there as @QuelleLove or @ClassicFilmRead ) and got some great questions in return. Thank you to all who participated and to Jeff Rapsis for taking the time out to do this interview.

For those of you in the Boston area, Jeff Rapsis will be back at the Somerville Theater on Sunday August 7th at 7:00 pm for another Buster Keaton screening. He'll be showing the Buster Keaton shorts The High Sign (1921) and Cops (1922) and one of my favorite Keaton full-length films Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928). Don't miss out on this opportunity!

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1) @TPJost asks- What first got you interested in silent films?

I had a music teacher in junior high who was also a film collector, and he'd bring in 16mm prints of short comedies such as the Chaplin Mutuals and screen them in study hall. I remember the very first one I saw was 'One A.M.' and something about the film caught my interest. I then started checking out books from the local library, including Walter Kerr's then-new 'Silent Clowns,' and I never looked back. Before long, I was saving my allowance and birthday money to order 8mm prints from Blackhawk Films in Iowa. I've maintained an interest ever since, but only started accompanying films in the past five years or so. I had studied music and played keyboard, and I found that doing music and film together was like chocolate and peanut butter for me.


2) @BiscuitKitten from the blog Sittin' on a Backyard Fence  asks - What was the first movie you accompanied?

The first full-length feature was a Halloween screening of 'The Phantom of the Opera' (1925) at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, N.H. in 2007. I had no time to prepare, but quickly came up with a few themes that were useful throughout the film, and it went pretty successfully. This encouraged me to tackle other films, and I've been at it ever since. Although I've had a lifelong interest in silent film, and I studied music separately, I had never considered accompanying silent film until I got a chance to score an independent feature film called 'Dangerous Crosswinds,' which was released in 2005. Prior to that, my only experience in creating music for silent film was accompanying short comedies here and there, including one time in a barn for a family gathering where the screen was an actual bedsheet.

3) @Walking26 asks - How do you decide what music to play?

One ground rule for me is that I use my own made-up material rather than songs or period pieces of the era. For each film, what I typically do is create four or five melodies or chord sequences, each with a different character -- one might be a main theme, then a secondary "love" theme, and maybe a forboding series of chords to help signal something important, and so on. Then, while the movie runs, I draw on this "bank" of material to improvise music that supports the film in real time. Because it's being done live, it also reflects the audience response as well as my own personal reactions, and so there's a kind of unpredictable energy present that I think is very different from when a score is all planned out and written in advance. It's a bit of a high wire act, but I think it's an important element in bringing these films back to life for modern audiences.

4) @pebbleinmyshoe from Gina: Blogs Books in Translation  and @diandapanda from Classic Movie Blog want to know about how you prepare and what you improvise. Is your performance practiced a lot in advance,do you wing it and is it the same music each time or is there wiggle room to improvise for the mood of a scene?

Generally, each performance is improvised live on the spot, although I try to create enough useful musical material beforehand to have a consistent musical vocabulary to work with that allows a score to hold together. To prepare for a film, I'll try to view it once beforehand to get a sense of the overall arc of the movie -- when the big scenes are, and any important moments like the firing of a gun. While I do this, I kind of doodle on the piano, and when I come up with something useful, I stop and jot down a scrap of melody or a distinctive harmony. It builds organically from there. And usually that's it for advance preparation, although for big films that I'm not too familiar with, I might watch them again with the DVD player on fast forward just to remind myself of the order of the narrative, which helps in terms of pacing the score in performance.

5) @NiamhVintageKid from Born in the Wrong Decade  asks - Do you ever feel like being completely contradictory and playing horror music during a romantic moment and vice versa?

Yes, but only when it's justified. Fundamentally, my job is to create music to help bring a vintage film to life for an audience today. Ideally, if what I'm doing is successful, audiences should not be really hearing the music separately, but should be absorbed in the film as a total experience. However, I find that using unexpected music can sometimes add real depth to a scene by contributing subtext to what's on screen. Say you have a love scene played between two people who are secretly scheming to kill each other; music can do a lot to bring out both of those seemingly contradictory emotions at the same time. Also, I feel the best silent film comedy does not need "funny" music, but works best when played straight. And in terms of the all-important audience reaction, you need to be really careful not to overplay or play too loud for a comedy, because that keeps audience members from hearing each other react, and that contagious audience reaction is one of the great glories of silent film. They were made to be seen by large crowds in a theater, and music should help induce or trigger that reaction, rather than stifle it.

6) @filmclassics asks - Do you ever get emotional during a performance?

Yes. One film that always gets to me is 'Wings' (1927), the big World War I flying epic. I've done it maybe four times in performance, and it's hard not to get all choked up at some moments near the end. My father was a pilot from the old school, which may have something to do with this. But it's not just me -- once we screened 'Wings' for the New Hampshire Aviation Museum, and a large contingent of old flyboys showed up, and at the end all these tough guys were bawling and blowing their noses! I find one of the great things about silent film is that it's often about the big emotions: lust, anger, triumph, revenge, and so on. It's like opera in that regard, but even more so because silent film is more abstract, and therefore you project more of yourself into it. So if you buy into a film and let it cast its spell on you, it can be very intense, almost cathartic. I try to supply music that helps that process happen, and I personally respond to this kind of art, so it shouldn't be surprising that I get caught up in things every now and then.

Now onto some questions from me!

7) Where do you perform?

I've played films everywhere from big traditional theaters and concert halls to nursing home function rooms and noisy school assemblies. Because most of my work has been outside the big cities, audiences rarely exceed 150 people, so I find the best locations seem to be smaller venues (200 to 400 seats) so there's a kind of critical mass of energy with the audience. I also prefer places with good acoustics for the music, which is a major factor in me being able to work effectively, I think. The only unsatisfying gigs are when someone plans a 1920s-themed party (not very often these days) and they ask me about showing silent films as background entertainment or as atmosphere. This unfortunately tends to reinforce many of the negative stereotypes that persist about silent film, so I try to talk them out of it.

8) Is there a film you want to screen/accompany but haven't yet?

I would love to try some of the big Abel Gance epics such as 'J'Accuse,' 'La Roue,' or even 'Napoleon.' I've never done any of the silent Hitchcock films and I think those would be interesting. Also, I have yet to tackle several of the big Griffith epics, including 'Intolerance' and 'Broken Blossoms,' but I'm looking forward to doing them because the Griffith films seem to match my approach and my kind of music. 'The Birth of a Nation,' while regrettably racist, really comes to life with a score that works to support Griffith's story-telling. There are other more obscure features, such as 'The Johnstown Flood' (1926) and 'The Great K & A Train Robbery' (1926) that I'd like to do -- really, any railroad-themed film, let me at it. I love the big Biblical epics, too; I've yet to do the original 'Ten Commandments' (1923), but I will get a chance to do music for the epic (and weird) part-talkie 'Noah's Ark' (1928) for screenings around Easter 2012.

9) Why are silent films important to you?

First, I think they're a neglected and misunderstood art form that still contains a lot of expressive power if the right conditions are present: good prints, the big screen, live music, and an audience. For me personally, silent films tell stories and depict life in a way that I really respond to, and my efforts to create music for them and screen them stems from a desire to share this experience with others, I think. To me, it's amazing artistic accident that the technical limit of no synchronized soundtrack caused filmmakers to tell stories in a way that turned out to be so universal. And so they have a kind of timelessness woven into them, meaning they can still produce a strong impact all this time later. They're really a different art form than motion pictures today: not that they're more primitive, but they're different in terms of how stories were told and how a viewer contributes his or her own voices and bonds with characters (either consciously or unconsciously), thus personalizing the experience, and how the variable of live music can keep the films fresh and bridge the gap between the time of their making and a contemporary screening. To me, the idea of supplying music to enhance the experience of a film is a remarkable creative opportunity, as long as the goal is to respect the integrity of the film's vision. So I sometimes joke that I've finally found my niche: collaborating with dead people! Also, with the passage of time, even the most ordinary of silent films have another level of interest now, in that they depict so much about life that's changed since they were made. We just screened 'Tol'able David' (1921), which was filmed in rural Virginia, and in the film it looks as if life hadn't changed much since Colonial days! No automobiles, no electricity, no iPads. By watching silent films, it's possible to get a sense of what's transient and what's timeless about your own life and times, and I find it deeply rewarding to experience this myself and to share the experience with others.

10) Why should we watch silent films with live music, an audience, the correct aspect ratio, a good print, etc.?

Because that's how they were intended to be shown. The people who made these films, good or bad, did so with all these factors in mind, either consciously or unconsciously: the music, the big screen, the communal experience of the audience. They were baked into the films during planning, shooting, and editing. The films were never intended to be experienced, say, on a home entertainment center by just you alone or with your dog. They were created to be shown in theaters to audiences (the larger the better) and live music, and to discount these factors is to rob a film of much of its intended impact. I've seen it happen many times: a film that bored me when I watched it alone produced a surprisingly intense reaction when screened for an audience. D.W. Griffith's 'Way Down East' (1920) is a good example: In developing music for it, I thought the first two hours were so slow and creaky that they'd be a very tough go for an audience. But we got a good crowd for the screening and they reacted strongly right from the start, whether it was laughing good-naturedly at the moralistic titles or energetically booing the Lowell Sherman character once he showed his true colors. And when Richard Barthelmess rescued Lillian Gish from the waterfall, they went absolutely nuts!


Thank you Jeff for this interview!

Guest Blogger: Author Gigi Amateau interviews Author Joseph Papa

When Elizabeth Taylor passed away earlier in the year, one of my favorite authors Gigi Amateau tweeted the fact that she had met Taylor briefly years ago. I tweeted her back asking if she'd like to write a bit about the experience for Out of the Past. She agreed and made it even better by including it in an interview with Joseph Papa, the author of Elizabeth Taylor: A Passion For Life (read my review here). I thank Gigi for introducing me to Joseph Papa's book, for arranging this interview and for writing such wonderful books as Claiming Georgia Tate (a personal favorite), Chancey of the Maury River and A Certain Strain of Peculiar.

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Gigi: Certain stars have, oh, a personal impact on us regular folks - the big ones: Elvis, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Audrey Hepburn. When do you recall first becoming aware of Elizabeth Taylor? 

Joseph: My earliest memories of Elizabeth Taylor are actually from the mini-series North and South. I was (and still am, I suppose) obsessed with it as a child. Taylor has a small role in the series. It wasn't until much later that I would come to appreciate her as much as I do now.

G: What led you to write Elizabeth Taylor: A Passion for Life?

J: The idea for the book came very casually from an editor that I work with. She was looking for someone to "do" a book on Taylor and I jumped at the opportunity. I'm fortunate that she had the faith in me to do it.

 
G: It’s evident from the way you write about Elizabeth Taylor that you admire her for her tenacity, her free spirit, and her determination to succeed and experience life, as well as her beauty and glamour and style. If asked to express her life as a bumper sticker what would that bumper sticker say?

J: It would have to be a quote from Liz herself, well actually from her character in Suddenly Last Summer. I think perhaps: "Truth is the one thing I've never resisted." Or perhaps, "When the suncomes up, I have morals again"

G: How did she influence you?

J: If I've learned anything from Elizabeth Taylor, it's how pointless regret is. She never spent too

much time dwelling on mistakes and I think she grew and learned from each of them.

G: How about some word association, thinking of Elizabeth Taylor. I say Dick you say:

J: Liz

G: I say AIDS, you say:

J: crusader


G: I say mother, you say:

J: courage

G: I say Virginia, you say:

J: Senator (as in John Warner)

G: Speaking of Senator Warner, I think my favorite period of Elizabeth Taylor’s life is when she was married to John Warner. I was fourteen and in junior high school when I met her in Hanover County, Virginia at the Republican Party Ox Roast – what was then an annual fundraising event held on my friend’s farm. My friends and I were working the event by parking cars. She was there campaigning for her husband’s run for a Virginia senate seat. I remember she wore a cherry-red and white v-neck dress that showed off her legs and her cleavage. She looked so natural and comfortable and gorgeous. She stopped to greet me and asked what I planned to do with my life. I said I wanted to be an actress! She told me, “It takes a lot of hard work and determination, but if you really want it, then don’t ever give up.” Later as my friend and I were riding double bareback down the road on a mule, her car rolled by, and she stopped to talk to us, again. She asked how far we were going and told us to be careful on the road. I also remember from that time that she was married to John Warner, she told an interviewer about the two of them cooking together and arguing over whether the pasta was al dente. She threw the pasta against the wall and it stuck there, so they wrote ‘al dente’ and the date on the wall. I thought that was so romantic! So, what is your favorite period of Elizabeth Taylor’s life?



 
J: That's a tough question because I'm not certain that my favorite time in her life is necessary the one with the most impact ... that being of course her work with HIV/AIDS later in her life. I'm very drawn to the time in the 1950s when she was making some of her best films, Giant, Suddenly Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Room, etc. One of my favorite stories - that I uncovered while researching the book -was from the set of Giant where Taylor would forge her lifelong friendship with Rock Hudson. They filmed in very rural Texas and would frequently have to stop shooting because of hail storms. Hudson and Taylor would gather the balls of hail and use them as ice for chocolate martinis. The late 50's also saw her marriage to Mike Todd, a union that was cut short by his death. I find their time together endlessly fascinating and romantic.

Interview with John Stangeland, Warren William biographer

I had the pleasure of interviewing John Stangeland, author of the book Warren William: Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood (read my review of the book here). Apart from being a Warren William expert, an excellent writer and a swell guy all around, Stangeland is also a freelance comic book artist for Marvel, DC, Comico, Malibu and Now Comics. He owns a comic book store called Atlas Comics in Norridge, Illinois.

Please make sure you check out Stangeland's guest post on Cliff's website Warren-William.com as well as Cliff's interview of Stangeland.

Stangeland is also on Twitter (@magnificentcad) and writes a blog called: Magnificentscoundrel's Blog: Celebrating Warren William, Hollywood's Genius of Scurility.

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How did you first develop an interest in Warren William?

I've been watching classic Hollywood movies since I was a young kid in the early 70's, but it wasn't until 2004 that I encountered the essential Warren William. That summer, a friend gave me a tape of Skyscraper Souls, The Mouthpiece and Employees' Entrance, and I was both completely baffled and utterly fascinated. I couldn't believe I wasn't aware of him, especially since I was such a long time Warner Brothers fan. I subsequently realized that I had seen him multiple times before - in Imitation of Life and The Wolfman, among other pictures - but that those performances never made any kind of impression on me. His starring roles were clearly of a different stripe: forceful and charged with energy - unlike, for example Madame X, where he drifts in and out without much to do. I was hooked from that very day. From there, my curiousity got the better of me. With no solid information out there about him, I began some modest detective work and little by little I got hooked by the process.

Why did you decide to write this book? 

Besides my general interest, there were a few personal reasons for undertaking this project. First, the more I learned about Warren William the more I liked him, and the more I found him to share some similar characteristics with me. That made it very easy to devote my energy to uncovering his story. Also, my interest in history is very strong, and Warren's story - being famous and then forgotten - was extremely intriguing. I think the past is immensely important and not enough people pay attention to it, so the opportunity to document someone for modern audiences to rediscover was uppermost in my mind. Finally, it was my greatest opportunity to avoid beginning a creative project and not finishing it, something I've done a number of times. The energy, the interest and the desire were all there and stayed strong throughout, not the least because I respected and liked Warren William so much.  

What do you hope readers of your book will get out of the experience?

First, I hope they'll have a reasonably complete picture of Warren's life and the times in which he worked. More importantly, I hope readers take to heart the idea of sharing what they love with others around them. Anything someone hasn't read or seen before is new to them, and if anything - new or old - speaks to you, it should be passed on to those who can husband it for subsequent generations. That continuity is something like immortality. 

How long did it take you to write it and how much research did you do?

If I had been aware of how long this would all take I might have thought better of it right at the beginning! I did some online snooping for a number of months before I took my first research trip out to the West Coast in the summer of 2006. I really consider that the start of the actual process of writing the book. During the course of the next three years I went to Los Angeles twice more, and also traveled to New York, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Minnesota to dredge up leads. A lot of people helped along the way: archivists, historians, librarians, and of course Warren's surviving family members, who were nothing but gracious and generous with their time, memories and artifacts. In the end, I believe that there was about three solid years of research, and perhaps eighteen months of writing and pulling it together. Most of this was done in my spare time - nights and weekends - stretching the whole process to just over three and a half years from serious start to finished manuscript. 

Did you visit Aitkin, Minnesota, Warren William's home town, during your research?

I did indeed. It's about seven hours from where I live in Chicago, and I took a weekend trip there in 2008. The people couldn't have been nicer; I had a local writer (and resident Warren William fan) to show me around, and I was able to peruse the archives of the Aitkin Independent Age newspaper, which Warren's father owned. I even received a tour of the house young Warren William grew up in (built the summer he was five years old), which was a genuine treat. In addition to the opportunity to pick up facts that I couldn't find anywhere else, it was very helpful to get a sense of the place. Aitkin hasn't changed much in the intervening years, still being a small, close knit community. Seeing where Warren grew and played was indispensible for flavor and color. 

What was the most frustrating part of doing your research? Most joyful?

There was surprizingly little frustration in the research. A lot of things seemed to come together in pieces that fit very well with what I already knew. The joy of this project was most certainly encountering the extremely generous and good hearted people who helped me along the way. My Aitkin contact, Connie Pettersen, went above and beyond. Archivists at Warner Brothers, the Shubert organization, the American Academy and many other places were simply marvelous. The moment that I found Warren's neices (with the help of the lovely Valerie Yaroz at SAG) was very satisfying. Both Barbara and Patricia are particularly sweet, and meeting them was probably the high point of the process - they really love their famous uncle. 

Is there anything about Warren William you wanted to find out about but couldn't?

I really wish I had been able to discover more about Warren's health troubles during his final years. I did piece together a solid framework of the story, but I wanted to have access to more details. Unfortunately, those records are either long gone, or simply lost to the ages. Oh, and I'd certainly like to know more about Bette Davis' accusation of Warren's wolfish behavior towards her. It seems utterly out of place, but as a historian and researcher I can't dismiss it or confirm it without some further information.

Is there anything about Warren William that surprised you?

The fact that he and his wife Helen were so far apart in age - she was 17 years his senior - was quite a surprize. They stayed together the rest of their lives in spite of his parents objections, and the presumed siren calls of his being a film star during the Golden Age of Hollywood. THAT is an accomplishment.

Which film do you consider Warren William's best? Worst?

This is a VERY tough question. I've had the unenviable task of introducing Warren William to many people over the last five or six years, and I'm always aware of the difficulty of deciding just which persona that I want to reveal based on the temperament of the person who is seeing him for the first time. Not everyone appreciates him as the magnificent bastard of Skyscraper Souls or Employees' Entrance - he did his job so well in those pictures that some people simply dislike him as a result. If I were going to pick the film that seems the most satisfying to modern audiences AND features one of his best performances, it would be The Mouthpiece (1932). It has a great character arc, and some genuinely riveting scenes. And, although it has some modest deficiencies, I think Lady For a Day is quite satisfying. Although the focus of the picture is on May Robson, Warren has a fantastic role and gives a great performance in it.

As to his worst film, I'm going to have to pick Satan Met a Lady (1936). I know it is starting to garner a minor rep as an underrated screwball farce, but I'm not on that bandwagon. It's a cheap, unruly attempt to forge a mystery / comedy hybrid and it fails miserably, as least partly because Warren overplays his role to grotesque proportions. And my runner up is Smarty (1934) - as reprehensible and disagreeable a film as I've ever seen. 

What was the most fun piece of information/trivia you found out about Warren William?

The love he showed for dogs was simply amazing. Warren and his wife had no kids, and it was clear that their dogs were surrogate children for the couple. During his life he did a LOT of charity work for animal rights, and even donated some of his estate to help those creatures that had given him so much pleasure. The thing that almost everyone else comments on is his amateur inventing career, and the creation of his "rolling apartment" - the panel truck that he personally built and outfitted as one of the earliest recreational vehicles. If there were one other thing I'd like to have that I couldn't find, it would be some photographs of his motorized brain child.

The last thing I'd like to say, Raquelle - after thanking you for your interest - is that if people love Warren William, I hope they'll continue to spread the word of his career. My greatest wish is that 50 or 100 years from now, there are still fans talking about him and rediscovering his work. And if they want to learn more, I'm proud to have done the work for them to find out what they'd like to know.