Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Six-word Memoir
If you had to convey your entire existence in six words, what would you say? Here at Powells.com, we've been thinking. Bolton condensed his whole life into: "Push rock, rolls back, push again." (We think he's being overdramatic.) Megan went with "Urban bumpkin seeks savings account, chickens." Yep, that's about right. And now we can't stop summing ourselves up.
The folks at SMITH magazine have been compiling tiny memoirs for a while now, first published in print as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Contributors range from ordinary people who submitted their six words online to not-so-regular folks like Amy Sedaris ("Mushrooms. Clowns. Wands. Five. Wig. Thatched.") and Chuck Klosterman ("Nobody cared, then they did. Why?").
Now, they've followed up with Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak: By Writers Famous and Obscure, being released just in time for the most polarizing of saint-based holidays. Some of our favorites include Elizabeth Minkel's "Silently suffered his facial hair experiments" and Jaynel Attolini's "Among your sexiest attributes: health insurance."
We couldn't help but get sucked into the spirit of Valentine's Day, and picked some titles for lovers and haters alike — guaranteed to cement your bliss, fuel your rage, or give you something to look forward to — like Armistead Maupin's six words: "He still needs me at sixty-four." Aww.
But, wait: now, it's your turn! We're going to give you a chance to get your little life story published in the next book in the seriesWe're going to give you a chance to get your little life story published in the next book in the series, "It Was Fun While It Lasted: And More Six-Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure," scheduled for release this fall. Imagine the chagrin displayed on the faces of all those high school A-holes at your next class reunion when you walk in wearing a button that says, "Just published my memoir. No biggie."
Simply post a comment containing your six-word autobiography below — a general summation, not limited to love or heartbreak. (But really, is it ever about anything else? Sigh.) We'll pick 10 finalists, to be featured on our blog, and submit them to the HarperCollins panel of judges, who will choose the soon-to-be-published author.
http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=4491
The folks at SMITH magazine have been compiling tiny memoirs for a while now, first published in print as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Contributors range from ordinary people who submitted their six words online to not-so-regular folks like Amy Sedaris ("Mushrooms. Clowns. Wands. Five. Wig. Thatched.") and Chuck Klosterman ("Nobody cared, then they did. Why?").
Now, they've followed up with Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak: By Writers Famous and Obscure, being released just in time for the most polarizing of saint-based holidays. Some of our favorites include Elizabeth Minkel's "Silently suffered his facial hair experiments" and Jaynel Attolini's "Among your sexiest attributes: health insurance."
We couldn't help but get sucked into the spirit of Valentine's Day, and picked some titles for lovers and haters alike — guaranteed to cement your bliss, fuel your rage, or give you something to look forward to — like Armistead Maupin's six words: "He still needs me at sixty-four." Aww.
But, wait: now, it's your turn! We're going to give you a chance to get your little life story published in the next book in the seriesWe're going to give you a chance to get your little life story published in the next book in the series, "It Was Fun While It Lasted: And More Six-Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure," scheduled for release this fall. Imagine the chagrin displayed on the faces of all those high school A-holes at your next class reunion when you walk in wearing a button that says, "Just published my memoir. No biggie."
Simply post a comment containing your six-word autobiography below — a general summation, not limited to love or heartbreak. (But really, is it ever about anything else? Sigh.) We'll pick 10 finalists, to be featured on our blog, and submit them to the HarperCollins panel of judges, who will choose the soon-to-be-published author.
http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=4491
Monday, January 26, 2009
Straight From the Heart
With his Tales of the City series, author Armistead Maupin introduced a cast of eccentric characters who challenged the definition of "normal" and won the hearts of readers around the world.
Armistead Maupin admits that most of his main characters are pieces of his own personality. That's an extraordinary thought to anyone familiar with the colorful and very eccentric characters he has managed to bring to life in his hugely popular Tales of the City series of novels. "I simply looked into another corner of my own heart to find them, and some I’ve borrowed from friends," says Maupin. Two of the main characters, the naive newcomer, Mary Ann Singleton, and Michael Tolliver, the hopeful gay romantic, are clearly at the heart of both the author and his stories.
Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944. He graduated from the University of North Carolina and served as a Naval officer in Vietnam before working as a reporter for a newspaper in South Carolina. In 1971 he moved to San Francisco to take up a position as a reporter with the Associated Press.
Maupin found plenty of inspiration in his new city, and two years after settling there he started to write the "Tales of the City" as a serialized novel for the "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper. The series chronicled the lives and loves of the colorful clan that resided at the fictitious 28 Barbary Lane and grew into a global sensation when Maupin released his tales as novels. Nearly three decades later there are over four million books in circulation worldwide. The six books have been translated into 12 different languages, and several have become television miniseries.
"A Letter to Mama"
It was shortly after his move to San Francisco that Maupin went public about his homosexuality. "San Francisco is the place where I found my own soul," he says. "I reprimand myself for every moment of my youth that I wasted not telling the truth, not loving who I wanted to love, and being who I wanted to be because that turned out to be the most attractive thing I could do and my success grew out of my ability to do that."
Maupin became the first of a new breed of openly gay authors, and homosexuality has remained a central theme of most of his books. "When I came out of the closet I nailed the closet shut," he says, quoting the words of the gay character Michael Tolliver from Tales of the City. Maupin also used Michael to come out to his own parents. In "A Letter to Mama," the fictional Michael wrote home of his struggle to come to terms with his sexuality and asked his parents to accept him for what he was. "When I wrote it, it took me less time than anything else I had ever written," says Maupin, "because I had been composing it in my head for about 15 years." "A Letter to Mama," Maupin’s most widely published work, has even been set to music.
The storyteller
Already at an early age, the young Armistead had a deep desire to be a storyteller. "I was the little nerdy kid who would make other kids sit down around the campsite and listen to my stories," he says. He continues to be at ease with certain aspects of the art -- and he's as much at home on the stage as he is on the page. "I write to be read aloud," he says, "so I think of the 'concert version' as the ultimate form of my work. At any rate, I enjoy it the most."
His readings are unconventional and often include a free-form "conversation" with the audience that draws heavily on his life and work. "I feel no relationship with the stuffy side of literature," says Maupin, "I work very hard to make my art entertaining and my entertainment artful."
Life-affirming humor is another leitmotif in Maupin’s books. "I survive by laughing at myself. I have to do that in order to explain what a big mess I am sometimes," he says. "When your humor is self-deprecating then people find it very easy to identify with. And it forgives them their own sins, when you talk about yours and laugh about them."
In 1992, the novel Maybe the Moon became another international bestseller and marked Maupin’s departure from the Tales of the City series. It chronicles the misadventures of a dwarf actress working in Hollywood and again demonstrates Maupin's incredible empathy with his characters. "The character made the perfect disguise. I could tell the most extraordinary things about myself and never fear being discovered," says Maupin. He dedicated the book to his friend the late Tamara De Treaux, the dwarf actress best known for inhabiting the costume of E.T. in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film of the same name.
A new tale to tell
His latest book, The Night Listener, has also been inspired by events in Maupin’s own life. "It is sort of part memoir and part mystery story," he says, adding that it is "in many ways an effort to fold in personal experiences and stories that I'd been telling my friends for years, which they said I really should do something with."
The Night Listener explores the question of how we tell stories, to whom, and why. The central character is a late-night radio storyteller in San Francisco. In the midst of a personal crisis the broadcaster receives unexpected comfort from a 13-year-old fan. The young boy, a talented writer, has somehow survived and recorded a life of the most horrible abuse. Through a series of long-distance phone calls the aging storyteller becomes attached to the youth, who seems much wiser than his years.
"I don’t think it is such a big distance actually between Tales of the City and The Night Listener," says Maupin. "They both have the same intention at heart -- to envelope the reader and not let them go until they are done with the book. In The Night Listener I found a story that was capable of that without the soap opera structure of Tales of the City."
The Night Listener became a "New York Times" bestseller and reached No. 1 on the bestseller list in France. Maupin has already started work on the screenplay.
I want to be an institution
After spending time in New Zealand, Armistead Maupin is today once again residing in San Francisco. He is happy to be back in the city closest to his heart. Being in love, he says, and having plenty of good friends in his life are enormously important to him. But he has no intention of simply sitting back and enjoying his success. He is constantly composing and discovering new stories. "I’m a good eavesdropper," he says, "I am always absorbing and taking things in. I am a vampire who sucks things out of people almost on the spot."
"Sometimes," says Maupin, "I have to stop and realize that I am somewhat of an elder these days and that there's some joy in that." He pauses for a reflective moment before revealing his wish, "I hope I'm lucky enough to live for a while and someday be considered an institution. I think that would be a great deal of fun."
Breandáin O'Shea
http://www.inspiredminds.de/detail.php?id=25
Armistead Maupin admits that most of his main characters are pieces of his own personality. That's an extraordinary thought to anyone familiar with the colorful and very eccentric characters he has managed to bring to life in his hugely popular Tales of the City series of novels. "I simply looked into another corner of my own heart to find them, and some I’ve borrowed from friends," says Maupin. Two of the main characters, the naive newcomer, Mary Ann Singleton, and Michael Tolliver, the hopeful gay romantic, are clearly at the heart of both the author and his stories.
Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944. He graduated from the University of North Carolina and served as a Naval officer in Vietnam before working as a reporter for a newspaper in South Carolina. In 1971 he moved to San Francisco to take up a position as a reporter with the Associated Press.
Maupin found plenty of inspiration in his new city, and two years after settling there he started to write the "Tales of the City" as a serialized novel for the "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper. The series chronicled the lives and loves of the colorful clan that resided at the fictitious 28 Barbary Lane and grew into a global sensation when Maupin released his tales as novels. Nearly three decades later there are over four million books in circulation worldwide. The six books have been translated into 12 different languages, and several have become television miniseries.
"A Letter to Mama"
It was shortly after his move to San Francisco that Maupin went public about his homosexuality. "San Francisco is the place where I found my own soul," he says. "I reprimand myself for every moment of my youth that I wasted not telling the truth, not loving who I wanted to love, and being who I wanted to be because that turned out to be the most attractive thing I could do and my success grew out of my ability to do that."
Maupin became the first of a new breed of openly gay authors, and homosexuality has remained a central theme of most of his books. "When I came out of the closet I nailed the closet shut," he says, quoting the words of the gay character Michael Tolliver from Tales of the City. Maupin also used Michael to come out to his own parents. In "A Letter to Mama," the fictional Michael wrote home of his struggle to come to terms with his sexuality and asked his parents to accept him for what he was. "When I wrote it, it took me less time than anything else I had ever written," says Maupin, "because I had been composing it in my head for about 15 years." "A Letter to Mama," Maupin’s most widely published work, has even been set to music.
The storyteller
Already at an early age, the young Armistead had a deep desire to be a storyteller. "I was the little nerdy kid who would make other kids sit down around the campsite and listen to my stories," he says. He continues to be at ease with certain aspects of the art -- and he's as much at home on the stage as he is on the page. "I write to be read aloud," he says, "so I think of the 'concert version' as the ultimate form of my work. At any rate, I enjoy it the most."
His readings are unconventional and often include a free-form "conversation" with the audience that draws heavily on his life and work. "I feel no relationship with the stuffy side of literature," says Maupin, "I work very hard to make my art entertaining and my entertainment artful."
Life-affirming humor is another leitmotif in Maupin’s books. "I survive by laughing at myself. I have to do that in order to explain what a big mess I am sometimes," he says. "When your humor is self-deprecating then people find it very easy to identify with. And it forgives them their own sins, when you talk about yours and laugh about them."
In 1992, the novel Maybe the Moon became another international bestseller and marked Maupin’s departure from the Tales of the City series. It chronicles the misadventures of a dwarf actress working in Hollywood and again demonstrates Maupin's incredible empathy with his characters. "The character made the perfect disguise. I could tell the most extraordinary things about myself and never fear being discovered," says Maupin. He dedicated the book to his friend the late Tamara De Treaux, the dwarf actress best known for inhabiting the costume of E.T. in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film of the same name.
A new tale to tell
His latest book, The Night Listener, has also been inspired by events in Maupin’s own life. "It is sort of part memoir and part mystery story," he says, adding that it is "in many ways an effort to fold in personal experiences and stories that I'd been telling my friends for years, which they said I really should do something with."
The Night Listener explores the question of how we tell stories, to whom, and why. The central character is a late-night radio storyteller in San Francisco. In the midst of a personal crisis the broadcaster receives unexpected comfort from a 13-year-old fan. The young boy, a talented writer, has somehow survived and recorded a life of the most horrible abuse. Through a series of long-distance phone calls the aging storyteller becomes attached to the youth, who seems much wiser than his years.
"I don’t think it is such a big distance actually between Tales of the City and The Night Listener," says Maupin. "They both have the same intention at heart -- to envelope the reader and not let them go until they are done with the book. In The Night Listener I found a story that was capable of that without the soap opera structure of Tales of the City."
The Night Listener became a "New York Times" bestseller and reached No. 1 on the bestseller list in France. Maupin has already started work on the screenplay.
I want to be an institution
After spending time in New Zealand, Armistead Maupin is today once again residing in San Francisco. He is happy to be back in the city closest to his heart. Being in love, he says, and having plenty of good friends in his life are enormously important to him. But he has no intention of simply sitting back and enjoying his success. He is constantly composing and discovering new stories. "I’m a good eavesdropper," he says, "I am always absorbing and taking things in. I am a vampire who sucks things out of people almost on the spot."
"Sometimes," says Maupin, "I have to stop and realize that I am somewhat of an elder these days and that there's some joy in that." He pauses for a reflective moment before revealing his wish, "I hope I'm lucky enough to live for a while and someday be considered an institution. I think that would be a great deal of fun."
Breandáin O'Shea
http://www.inspiredminds.de/detail.php?id=25
Honest Talk With the Outspoken Maupin
Author Armistead Maupin shoots more than the breeze with OutSmart's Blase DiStefano
How appropriate that Armistead Maupin is part of our Gayest & Greatest issue-he's way GAY, what with being extremely open and honest about his sexuality, and he rates GREAT, what with being a best-selling author and a damned good writer. Maupin is probably best known for his TALES OF THE CITY series of books, which produced five best-selling books and two wildly popular television mini-series, with a third on the way. TALES OF THE CITY and MORE TALES OF THE CITY interwove gays with straights with bisexuals with transgenders with AIDS with dope with sex. If you haven't read them, take some time to do so-they were ahead of their times and are still considered controversial. If reading doesn't flip your wig, rent the two videos, which are true to Maupin's originals. And now available for your reading pleasure is Maupin's newest piece of fiction, THE NIGHT LISTENER. (True Maupin die-hards have been listening to a "radio serialization" version of the novel read by the author on Salon.com from Sept. 5 to Sept. 29, an Internet first-"like having Uncle Armistead read to you every night before bedtime," Maupin describes it.) Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy these nonfiction tales.
OutSmart: Hi, this is Blase.
Armistead Maupin: Hi, Blase, it's Armistead Maupin.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, how are you after all these years?
Well, I'm fine. The last time we talked was 1985.
Back when you were with TWT, right?
That's right... So, I read your book [THE NIGHT LISTENER]. It's wonderful. It's been so long since your last one. What took you so long?
Well, I wrote and produced two mini-series. I was actively involved in TALES OF THE CITY and MORE TALES OF THE CITY. I was there on the set...
That's why they were so good.
Thank you, I believe that, too [laughs]. It's important for the writer for any property to remain close to the material, to see it survive. Especially something this personal. It would be so easy to get it wrong culturally. So I've been present for that, and I spent about a year and a half adapting my last novel, MAYBE THE MOON, as a feature film and have yet to find a producer. There's been a fair amount to occupy me and a story that was very slow in coming. I had the general mystery outlined in my head for a long time, but I was lacking an additional dramatic element which life managed to provide for me when Jerry and I broke up four years ago. I realized I could weave the experience of that into this little mystery.
What percentage of the book is...
True? [Laughs] It's FICTION, Blase. Writers write from every aspect of their own lives and weave it together. In some ways it's not true at all, so I won't even go down that road with you. I'd like to think it's all emotionally true. I tried to stay very close to my feelings when I wrote that novel and expose them, warts and all. I made myself a promise to be as honest as possible even when it was unattractive.
I actually started reading it at around 6:30 or 7:00 one evening and I didn't put it down until it was around 1:30 or 2:00. I finished the book.
That's just what I like to hear [laughs]... That continues to be the strongest drive I have when writing-the need to make people want to keep reading.
At the end of that first chapter, I was in tears. And then the story changed, and I was enthralled.
Good. Do me a favor when you write about it-try to stay as mysterious as possible without giving the surprise in the middle of the book.
Consider it done.
A couple of the advance reviewers gave very positive reviews but almost all of them went too far, [which] was tremendously frustrating.... Most of my life I've been inspired by the film VERTIGO. It had a big impact on me when I was a kid and it still moves me in ways that surprise me, especially now that I'm approaching Jimmy Stewart's age. And I've always wanted to write a novel that was about human longing and obsession that stays very close to the bone emotionally, but that completely turns you around halfway through.
And that it did. So, you're coming to Galveston in October.
I'll take your word for it [laughs].
Trust me, you will be here in October [doing a speaking engagement].... I wondered what that entails.
It'll entail reading the first chapter of the book, probably the first chapter, usually is. And chatting with the audience and answering questions. It's what I like to do the most. It allows me to have direct interaction with the readers. So I'm doing that and a number of gigs in seven or eight different halls around the country.
I'm glad that Galveston is one of them. That should be neat because the Grand 1894 Opera House is an intimate little place. It'll be perfect.
Yeah, it fills my age-old desire to tell stories directly. I used to do that when I was eight years old-you know, make my friends sit down around the campfire and tell ghost stories. It's changed a bit, I just make a living at it. Still the same little queen I was then.
[Laughs] So how is FURTHER TALES OF THE CITY coming?
FURTHER has wrapped. And it's being edited as we speak. It should be on Showtime in April or May of 2001.
So, what do you think?
Oh, I'm thrilled to death. It's twice as sexy as the other shows.
I can deal with that.
I thought you might like that. All of the actors get naked at one point. They've been extremely generous in that regard.
Is Thomas Gibson...
He died in the last one.
Oh, stupid me.
He's furious about that, by the way. I talked to him a few days ago, and he doesn't like to even hear me talk about the new show: "You could have let me come back as a ghost or something." But he remains a dear friend, but unfortunately we killed off Beecham last time around. Billy Campbell's coming back...in all his naked beautiful glory. And so is Paul Hopkins. We have the whole cast from last time around, including Mother Mucka (Jackie Burrows) who wasn't actually in the book. I never really dealt with what happened to Mother Mucka and I decided this time around I wanted to flesh out that storyline. And Lea DeLaria plays a bush pilot in it.
A what pilot?
A bush pilot. What other kind would you expect? It's like an Alaskan float plane pilot who flies through the bush.
[Laughs] Oh, that is too perfect.
She had such a laugh out of that. She wanted us to credit her that way on the credits, where it would say, "Lea DeLaria as The Bush Pilot." And Joel Grey has a cameo this time around playing the guy that presides over Rock Hudson's Boy Party. Rock Hudson is called Cage Tyler in FURTHER TALES OF THE CITY, not because I felt any compunction about avoiding naming him, but I was afraid viewers would spend their whole time saying, "That's not Rock Hudson." So we made him into a sort of generic closeted superstar named Cage Tyler. It happens that the actor we picked has some qualities that are very like Rock. So it was quite eerie for me to watch that portion.
Because you were friends with Rock Hudson.
Oh yeah, and the pathetic little sexual escapade you'll see in FURTHER TALES was drawn from my own life. [Laughs] It's pathetic, you'll see. It's in the book that way, but it's basically Michael...well, never mind. Lots of kissing, lots of humping. I think it's sexier, funnier, sadder, faster, and more adventurous.
And on Showtime!
Yeah, so far there have been no restrictions whatsoever. Several times I stood in front of the monitor during a love scene and found my own jaw dropping [laughs]. I turned to this woman producer and said, "Oh my God, are we doing this?"
Are you concerned about the editing process at all?
Oh sure, and I'll have a chance to look at the rough cut, to make suggestions if I feel the directors made a choice that doesn't comply with what I imagined the scene to be. But I also trust our director a great deal. We've come to know each other very well and like each other. His name is Pierre Gang. And he's gay and has a wonderful combination of sentiment and liberal sexual attitudes. And a great visual sense.
I may have to order Showtime just for that. The only other thing, when you were doing CELLULOID CLOSET, did you write that with other people?
I wrote the narration myself.
Then Lily Tomlin came in and narrated.
Oh, you don't want me to dredge up that tired old thing all over again.
What I was going to say is that I had read, probably a couple of months ago, that she actually came out.
You know, if Lily Tomlin had come out a couple of months ago, it would have been big news.
It was in a little publication.
That's where it always is.
Oh, so you think they just made it up?
I don't know, I don't know. She's been walking the line for such a long time that I've lost interest whether she's in or out. If she came out, it would supplant Ellen DeGeneres, you know. Lilly Tomlin's a major established star. The sad reality is it's too late for Lily. She had her chance and she missed it. And Ellen made that abundantly clear when she came out.
And it was remarkable, too. I'm not really jaded when it comes to that.
Oh, I'm hugely moved by what Ellen DeGeneres did. I have no patience whatsoever with gay people who find fault with her in any way. It's hard to imagine how she could have done it with more class. I don't know if you've seen her new HBO special. It's funny and honest and just gay enough. And totally her. I was sitting all by myself just hooting.
I'm looking forward to the video. And thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
You're very welcome, Blase.
http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/issue/i10-00/interview.html
How appropriate that Armistead Maupin is part of our Gayest & Greatest issue-he's way GAY, what with being extremely open and honest about his sexuality, and he rates GREAT, what with being a best-selling author and a damned good writer. Maupin is probably best known for his TALES OF THE CITY series of books, which produced five best-selling books and two wildly popular television mini-series, with a third on the way. TALES OF THE CITY and MORE TALES OF THE CITY interwove gays with straights with bisexuals with transgenders with AIDS with dope with sex. If you haven't read them, take some time to do so-they were ahead of their times and are still considered controversial. If reading doesn't flip your wig, rent the two videos, which are true to Maupin's originals. And now available for your reading pleasure is Maupin's newest piece of fiction, THE NIGHT LISTENER. (True Maupin die-hards have been listening to a "radio serialization" version of the novel read by the author on Salon.com from Sept. 5 to Sept. 29, an Internet first-"like having Uncle Armistead read to you every night before bedtime," Maupin describes it.) Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy these nonfiction tales.
OutSmart: Hi, this is Blase.
Armistead Maupin: Hi, Blase, it's Armistead Maupin.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, how are you after all these years?
Well, I'm fine. The last time we talked was 1985.
Back when you were with TWT, right?
That's right... So, I read your book [THE NIGHT LISTENER]. It's wonderful. It's been so long since your last one. What took you so long?
Well, I wrote and produced two mini-series. I was actively involved in TALES OF THE CITY and MORE TALES OF THE CITY. I was there on the set...
That's why they were so good.
Thank you, I believe that, too [laughs]. It's important for the writer for any property to remain close to the material, to see it survive. Especially something this personal. It would be so easy to get it wrong culturally. So I've been present for that, and I spent about a year and a half adapting my last novel, MAYBE THE MOON, as a feature film and have yet to find a producer. There's been a fair amount to occupy me and a story that was very slow in coming. I had the general mystery outlined in my head for a long time, but I was lacking an additional dramatic element which life managed to provide for me when Jerry and I broke up four years ago. I realized I could weave the experience of that into this little mystery.
What percentage of the book is...
True? [Laughs] It's FICTION, Blase. Writers write from every aspect of their own lives and weave it together. In some ways it's not true at all, so I won't even go down that road with you. I'd like to think it's all emotionally true. I tried to stay very close to my feelings when I wrote that novel and expose them, warts and all. I made myself a promise to be as honest as possible even when it was unattractive.
I actually started reading it at around 6:30 or 7:00 one evening and I didn't put it down until it was around 1:30 or 2:00. I finished the book.
That's just what I like to hear [laughs]... That continues to be the strongest drive I have when writing-the need to make people want to keep reading.
At the end of that first chapter, I was in tears. And then the story changed, and I was enthralled.
Good. Do me a favor when you write about it-try to stay as mysterious as possible without giving the surprise in the middle of the book.
Consider it done.
A couple of the advance reviewers gave very positive reviews but almost all of them went too far, [which] was tremendously frustrating.... Most of my life I've been inspired by the film VERTIGO. It had a big impact on me when I was a kid and it still moves me in ways that surprise me, especially now that I'm approaching Jimmy Stewart's age. And I've always wanted to write a novel that was about human longing and obsession that stays very close to the bone emotionally, but that completely turns you around halfway through.
And that it did. So, you're coming to Galveston in October.
I'll take your word for it [laughs].
Trust me, you will be here in October [doing a speaking engagement].... I wondered what that entails.
It'll entail reading the first chapter of the book, probably the first chapter, usually is. And chatting with the audience and answering questions. It's what I like to do the most. It allows me to have direct interaction with the readers. So I'm doing that and a number of gigs in seven or eight different halls around the country.
I'm glad that Galveston is one of them. That should be neat because the Grand 1894 Opera House is an intimate little place. It'll be perfect.
Yeah, it fills my age-old desire to tell stories directly. I used to do that when I was eight years old-you know, make my friends sit down around the campfire and tell ghost stories. It's changed a bit, I just make a living at it. Still the same little queen I was then.
[Laughs] So how is FURTHER TALES OF THE CITY coming?
FURTHER has wrapped. And it's being edited as we speak. It should be on Showtime in April or May of 2001.
So, what do you think?
Oh, I'm thrilled to death. It's twice as sexy as the other shows.
I can deal with that.
I thought you might like that. All of the actors get naked at one point. They've been extremely generous in that regard.
Is Thomas Gibson...
He died in the last one.
Oh, stupid me.
He's furious about that, by the way. I talked to him a few days ago, and he doesn't like to even hear me talk about the new show: "You could have let me come back as a ghost or something." But he remains a dear friend, but unfortunately we killed off Beecham last time around. Billy Campbell's coming back...in all his naked beautiful glory. And so is Paul Hopkins. We have the whole cast from last time around, including Mother Mucka (Jackie Burrows) who wasn't actually in the book. I never really dealt with what happened to Mother Mucka and I decided this time around I wanted to flesh out that storyline. And Lea DeLaria plays a bush pilot in it.
A what pilot?
A bush pilot. What other kind would you expect? It's like an Alaskan float plane pilot who flies through the bush.
[Laughs] Oh, that is too perfect.
She had such a laugh out of that. She wanted us to credit her that way on the credits, where it would say, "Lea DeLaria as The Bush Pilot." And Joel Grey has a cameo this time around playing the guy that presides over Rock Hudson's Boy Party. Rock Hudson is called Cage Tyler in FURTHER TALES OF THE CITY, not because I felt any compunction about avoiding naming him, but I was afraid viewers would spend their whole time saying, "That's not Rock Hudson." So we made him into a sort of generic closeted superstar named Cage Tyler. It happens that the actor we picked has some qualities that are very like Rock. So it was quite eerie for me to watch that portion.
Because you were friends with Rock Hudson.
Oh yeah, and the pathetic little sexual escapade you'll see in FURTHER TALES was drawn from my own life. [Laughs] It's pathetic, you'll see. It's in the book that way, but it's basically Michael...well, never mind. Lots of kissing, lots of humping. I think it's sexier, funnier, sadder, faster, and more adventurous.
And on Showtime!
Yeah, so far there have been no restrictions whatsoever. Several times I stood in front of the monitor during a love scene and found my own jaw dropping [laughs]. I turned to this woman producer and said, "Oh my God, are we doing this?"
Are you concerned about the editing process at all?
Oh sure, and I'll have a chance to look at the rough cut, to make suggestions if I feel the directors made a choice that doesn't comply with what I imagined the scene to be. But I also trust our director a great deal. We've come to know each other very well and like each other. His name is Pierre Gang. And he's gay and has a wonderful combination of sentiment and liberal sexual attitudes. And a great visual sense.
I may have to order Showtime just for that. The only other thing, when you were doing CELLULOID CLOSET, did you write that with other people?
I wrote the narration myself.
Then Lily Tomlin came in and narrated.
Oh, you don't want me to dredge up that tired old thing all over again.
What I was going to say is that I had read, probably a couple of months ago, that she actually came out.
You know, if Lily Tomlin had come out a couple of months ago, it would have been big news.
It was in a little publication.
That's where it always is.
Oh, so you think they just made it up?
I don't know, I don't know. She's been walking the line for such a long time that I've lost interest whether she's in or out. If she came out, it would supplant Ellen DeGeneres, you know. Lilly Tomlin's a major established star. The sad reality is it's too late for Lily. She had her chance and she missed it. And Ellen made that abundantly clear when she came out.
And it was remarkable, too. I'm not really jaded when it comes to that.
Oh, I'm hugely moved by what Ellen DeGeneres did. I have no patience whatsoever with gay people who find fault with her in any way. It's hard to imagine how she could have done it with more class. I don't know if you've seen her new HBO special. It's funny and honest and just gay enough. And totally her. I was sitting all by myself just hooting.
I'm looking forward to the video. And thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
You're very welcome, Blase.
http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/issue/i10-00/interview.html
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Congratulations
Congrats to Laura Linney (loved as Mary Ann Singleton in "Tales of the City") for her Golden Globe win tonight for "John Adams".
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Theatre Rhinoceros Plays 'Three On a Party'
Three on a Party charts both a history of queerdom in the twentieth century and the slow coming out of this thing called “same-sex marriage.” Directed by Delia MacDougall (Miss Furr and Miss Skeene) and John Fisher (Two on a Party and Suddenly Home) the Three On a Party cast includes Brendan Godfrey, and Ryan Tasker; with Sheila Balter, and JoAnne Winter both Charter Members of Word for Word; JoAnne is founding member and Artistic Director of Word for Word (member of Actors Equity Association).
Armistead Maupin has called Stein and Williams “the king and the queen” of LGBT writing, but he is unarguably the third of America’s great queer literary royal family. On Sunday May 17, 7 PM join the company for An Evening with Armistead Maupin in conversation with the audience and Theatre Rhinoceros Artistic Director John Fisher following the performance. (Tickets $30-50). On Friday May 22 following the performance there will be a post show discussion with Gertrude Stein expert and collector Hans Gallas.
From Stein’s Dadaesque tale of two lesbians in 1910, to Williams’ richly written fantasy of unbridled sex in the straight laced fifties, to the hilarious shenanigans of Maupin’s very San Francisco extended family in the 1990s, Three on a Party takes a literary journey across time and genre as it amuses, titillates and lays bare the passions of gay men and women. Gertrude Stein’s “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” is set in 1910 America and Paris. Stein's subtle, experimental word portrait is the saga of two women’s lives, exploring their entry into the Bohemian world and the change between them as lovers and as devotees of life outside artistic and sexual convention. In Tennessee Williams' short story "Two on a Party" a very unlikely couple takes a sexual road trip in this startling picture of the sexual mores of the 1950’s. When Cora meets Billy they are just a couple of hungry predators on a couple of New York bar stools. But soon, they find a bond in their ravenous lust for men. A heartbreaking tale of companionship, and certainly one the funniest and fun filled stories Williams ever set to paper, conveying all the heat, whimsy and aching desire of the Master’s great plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire.
In the wake of Harvey Milk and liberation comes a story of responsibility and commitment, Armistead Maupin's "Suddenly Home" which tells the story of Tess, a woman doubting her romantic relationship. She looks for guidance from her brother and his boyfriend and sees in their relationship the true meaning of love. America’s master narrator of “the gay life” turns his pen to a tale of same-sex marriage. Laced with all his familiar wit, compassion and love of San Francisco, Maupin’s tale captures Baghdad by the Bay at a time of dramatic change, the late 1980’s. Maupin’s little family struggles to find answers to life’s confusing propositions.
Director Delia MacDougall (Miss Furr and Miss Skeene) is an actor and director working mainly in San Francisco for the past twenty years. Delia is a founding member of three San Francisco theater companies. Delia has been a part of the Intersection’s resident theater company, Campo Santo, since its beginnings directing their second production, the world premiere of Erin Cressida Wilson’s Hurricane . Most recently she directed the world premiere of Denis Johnson’s Purvis at the Intersection for the Arts.. Other world premieres with Campo Santo include Naomi Iizuka’s 17 Reasons (Why) and The Language of Angels, (nomination: Critics Circle Award best production). She also directed the West Coast premiere of Naomi’s Polaroid Stories (Winner: Backstage West: Best Director/Ensemble) and for the Harbor Theater the west coast premiere of Jose Rivera’s Sonnets for and Old Century. Delia has directed over ten productions for Word for Word and the Z Space studio since 1996. Original Word for Word productions with premieres at the Magic Theater in San Francisco include: Immortal Heart,(Winner: Critics Circle Award: Production/ Director /Ensemble) Oil! The Ride, Winesburgh Ohio,(Winner: Critics Circle Award: Production /Director) Mrs. Dalloway’s Party and The Confessions of Madame Psyche.
Three On a Party -add two
Director John Fisher (“Two on a Party” and “Suddenly Home”) is now in his seventh year as the Executive Director of The GLAAD Media Award Winning Theatre Rhinoceros. He is also a nationally produced playwright and director. His plays include The Joy of Gay Sex, which was performed in New York City, and Medea: The Musical which was produced on HBO. Recent projects include Ishi: The Last of the Yahi at Theatre Rhino and Red Scare on Sunset at ACT. John is the only two-time winner of the Will Glickman Playwright Award, and a recipient of the NEA Grant, a GLAAD Media Award, two L.A. Weekly Awards, a Garland Award, two Cable Car Awards, a San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award, and ten Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards. John holds a Ph.D. in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Berkeley, but you don’t have to call him Doctor, and he has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and, for the past two years, at the Yale School of Drama. He makes his home in the Haight-Ashbury District with his life-partner Michael. He met Michael in his college dorm in 1982.
Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City Series, The Night Listener) was one of the first of a new breed of openly gay authors; his appeal has always resided in his inclusiveness as a storyteller. For over thirty years his beloved characters from 28 Barbary Lane in the Tales of the City series have cut an unprecedented path through popular culture-from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to six internationally best-selling novels to a Peabody Award-winning miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944 but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he served as a naval officer in the Mediterranean and with the River Patrol Force in Vietnam. Maupin worked briefly as a reporter for a newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, before being assigned to the San Francisco bureau of the Associated Press in 1971. The climate of freedom and tolerance he found in his adopted city inspired him to come out publicly as homosexual in 1974. Two years later he launched his "Tales of the City" serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, the first fiction to appear in an American daily for decades.
Maupin is the author of nine novels, including the six-volume Tales of the City series, Maybe the Moon, The Night Listener and, in 2007 he revisited one of his most beloved Tales characters in Michael Tolliver. Three miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney were made from the first three novels in the Tales series. The Night Listener became a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. Lives, a musical adaptation of Tales of the City is in the works from Jeff Whitty and Jason Moore (creators of the Tony award-winning hit Avenue Q), set to bow on Broadway in 2009. He is currently working on his next novel, Mary Ann in Autumn. Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner.
Theatre Rhinoceros (John Fisher, Artistic Director), America’s longest running (29 years) professional queer theatre, remains committed to founder Allan Estes’ original vision of developing and producing works of theatre that enlighten, enrich, and explore both the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of our queer community.
Word for Word Performing Arts Company is an ensemble whose mission is to tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction. Founded in 1993 by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Word for Word believes in the power of the short story to provide solace, compassion, and insight into our daily lives. We bring stories from diverse cultures to our diverse communities, and develop future audiences' love for the printed and spoken word. Word for Word is a program of the Z Space Studio.
Three On a Party -add three
Z SPACE STUDIO strives to fuel the development of American theater on a national level by nurturing new voices, new works, and new opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area. We fulfill the function by supporting a culturally and aesthetically diverse community of theater artists working together to develop Bay Area Theater and theater audiences. Led by Executive Director Lisa Steindler, the Z Space Studio has become one of the nation's leading laboratories for the development of new voices, new works and new directions in American theater.
The Z Space Studio employs hundreds of artists each year in the process of developing new works through its three principle programs: Word for Word, Z Plays, and Youth Arts. Since the founding of the Z Space Studio in 1993, the Studio and the Bay Area artists served have racked up an impressive list of awards and other notable achievements, including the Helen Hayes Award, the Kesselring Prize, the MacArthur Award, and two Pulitzer nominations. In 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2008, Z-produced projects have landed in the San Francisco Chronicle's "10 Best Theater Events of the Year" list. -- www.therhino.org
http://www.huliq.com/13/79567/theatre-rhinoceros-plays-three-partyThursday, January 8, 2009
Armistead on Harvey Ginsberg
Armistead sent me the following to share with the readers. His first and former editor, Harvey Ginsberg, passed away in January, Armistead wrote the following for the memorial.
Harvey Ginsberg (1930-2008)
I owe my career as a novelist to Harvey Ginsberg. It was Harvey who, on a trip to California in 1977, spotted my fictional serial in The San Francisco Chronicle and wrote me to suggest that there might be a novel there. This was the sweetest sort of windfall, since I’d already approached my newspaper’s own publishing arm, Chronicle Books, and been told that “Tales of the City” was too parochial for a national audience.
At Harvey’s request I sent him Xerox copies of my first two years of work, and we were off and running. (My $5000 advance was the largest amount of money I had ever received at one time.) Harvey didn’t micro-edit me, but he offered a suggestion that probably rescued me from oblivion: He urged me to remove the murder mystery subplot that I’d invented out of fear that my daily readers might lose interest in the serial. “If you leave it in,” Harvey told me, “the book will be reviewed as a mystery novel and not a comedy of manners, and I don’t think that’s what you want.” He was dead right, of course.
Harvey initially wanted to bind “Tales of the City” with a metal spiral – a stunt that had just worked successfully for Cyra McFadden’s “The Serial,” a compilation of her own storytelling for the Pacific Sun. To my huge relief, the spiral proved too costly for Harper & Row, so I was spared the embarrassment of looking imitative. We ended up with one of the first new oversized trade paperbacks. The cover was whimsical map of San Francisco by Sausalito cartoonist Phil Frank; the back offered a key to most of the major locales in the novel. There was nothing to describe the contents, so the novel sometimes got shelved in the travel section of bookstores. It stills amuses me to think how many horses that may have frightened out there in the streets of middle America.
I may have frightened some of Harvey’s horses as well. He was a buttoned-down old-school kind of guy with highbrow inclinations, and as much as he championed my work I think my particular brand of breezy California faggotry was just too much for him sometimes. I remember his dry-as-tinder response to the photograph I submitted to Harper & Row for publicity purposes: “We’re still recuperating from it, Armistead.” As I recall, my longish blond hair was parted down the middle and I was wearing a tweed sports coat without a shirt of any kind. (C’mon, it was the seventies -- or maybe I’d just been overly influenced by Truman Capote’s debut jacket photo.) On another occasion I suggested to Harvey that perhaps we should let the public know that there were elements of “Tales of the City” that might be – ahem – of interest to the homosexual population. Harvey just sighed deeply and said: “Toujour gai, Armistead. Toujour gai.”
As his obituary made clear, Harvey was a private man, but there are some things about him I can tell you for sure. He was an editor who loved words and language and the process of guiding a young writer to the best possible version of himself. He was blessed with taste and intelligence and fierce loyalty to his writers. “Tales of the City” was hardly an overnight success – we took 25 thousand returns, if I remember correctly – but Harvey was wonderfully gentle about it, assuring me that a good story will eventually find its audience as he ordered me to get back to work. Thirty years and nine novels later I still remember his no-nonsense encouragement. And I’ll be remembering next year, I hope, when a musical version of “Tales of the City” is slated to open on Broadway.
So thank you, Harvey, for sending me off on this great adventure.
And bon voyage yourself.
The following is Harvey's obituary from Publishers Weekly 1/8/09
Harvey Ginsberg, a veteran editor who worked in publishing for more than 40 years, died on December 30 after losing his battle with Parkinson’s. He was 78. Ginsberg worked at G.P. Putnam's Sons, Harper, and William Morrow & Co., among other companies, and edited such authors as John Irving, Saul Bellow, Rita Mae Brown, Thomas Harris, Caleb Carr and Armistead Maupin. A graduate of Harvard, where he was president of the Harvard Advocate, Ginsberg won the Roger Klein Award for Lifetime Editorial Achievement in 1988.
Harvey Ginsberg (1930-2008)
I owe my career as a novelist to Harvey Ginsberg. It was Harvey who, on a trip to California in 1977, spotted my fictional serial in The San Francisco Chronicle and wrote me to suggest that there might be a novel there. This was the sweetest sort of windfall, since I’d already approached my newspaper’s own publishing arm, Chronicle Books, and been told that “Tales of the City” was too parochial for a national audience.
At Harvey’s request I sent him Xerox copies of my first two years of work, and we were off and running. (My $5000 advance was the largest amount of money I had ever received at one time.) Harvey didn’t micro-edit me, but he offered a suggestion that probably rescued me from oblivion: He urged me to remove the murder mystery subplot that I’d invented out of fear that my daily readers might lose interest in the serial. “If you leave it in,” Harvey told me, “the book will be reviewed as a mystery novel and not a comedy of manners, and I don’t think that’s what you want.” He was dead right, of course.
Harvey initially wanted to bind “Tales of the City” with a metal spiral – a stunt that had just worked successfully for Cyra McFadden’s “The Serial,” a compilation of her own storytelling for the Pacific Sun. To my huge relief, the spiral proved too costly for Harper & Row, so I was spared the embarrassment of looking imitative. We ended up with one of the first new oversized trade paperbacks. The cover was whimsical map of San Francisco by Sausalito cartoonist Phil Frank; the back offered a key to most of the major locales in the novel. There was nothing to describe the contents, so the novel sometimes got shelved in the travel section of bookstores. It stills amuses me to think how many horses that may have frightened out there in the streets of middle America.
I may have frightened some of Harvey’s horses as well. He was a buttoned-down old-school kind of guy with highbrow inclinations, and as much as he championed my work I think my particular brand of breezy California faggotry was just too much for him sometimes. I remember his dry-as-tinder response to the photograph I submitted to Harper & Row for publicity purposes: “We’re still recuperating from it, Armistead.” As I recall, my longish blond hair was parted down the middle and I was wearing a tweed sports coat without a shirt of any kind. (C’mon, it was the seventies -- or maybe I’d just been overly influenced by Truman Capote’s debut jacket photo.) On another occasion I suggested to Harvey that perhaps we should let the public know that there were elements of “Tales of the City” that might be – ahem – of interest to the homosexual population. Harvey just sighed deeply and said: “Toujour gai, Armistead. Toujour gai.”
As his obituary made clear, Harvey was a private man, but there are some things about him I can tell you for sure. He was an editor who loved words and language and the process of guiding a young writer to the best possible version of himself. He was blessed with taste and intelligence and fierce loyalty to his writers. “Tales of the City” was hardly an overnight success – we took 25 thousand returns, if I remember correctly – but Harvey was wonderfully gentle about it, assuring me that a good story will eventually find its audience as he ordered me to get back to work. Thirty years and nine novels later I still remember his no-nonsense encouragement. And I’ll be remembering next year, I hope, when a musical version of “Tales of the City” is slated to open on Broadway.
So thank you, Harvey, for sending me off on this great adventure.
And bon voyage yourself.
The following is Harvey's obituary from Publishers Weekly 1/8/09
Harvey Ginsberg, a veteran editor who worked in publishing for more than 40 years, died on December 30 after losing his battle with Parkinson’s. He was 78. Ginsberg worked at G.P. Putnam's Sons, Harper, and William Morrow & Co., among other companies, and edited such authors as John Irving, Saul Bellow, Rita Mae Brown, Thomas Harris, Caleb Carr and Armistead Maupin. A graduate of Harvard, where he was president of the Harvard Advocate, Ginsberg won the Roger Klein Award for Lifetime Editorial Achievement in 1988.
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