Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, and Anne Enright Give Ten Candid Pieces of Writing Advice Each

in Literature, Writing | August 16th, 2013

The way peo­ple read on the inter­net has encour­aged the pro­vi­sion of “tips,” espe­cial­ly pre­sent­ed as short sen­tences col­lect­ed in lists. While we here at Open Cul­ture sel­dom ride that cur­rent, we make excep­tions for lists of tips by authors best known for their long-form tex­tu­al achieve­ments. Richard Ford (The Sports­writer books), Jonathan Franzen (The Cor­rec­tions and Free­dom), and Anne Enright (The Portable Vir­gin, The Gath­er­ing) here offer ten sug­ges­tions each to guide your own writ­ing habits. Though pre­sum­ably learned in the process of writ­ing nov­els, many of these lessons apply just as well to oth­er forms. I, for exam­ple, write most­ly essays, but still find great val­ue in Franzen’s instruc­tion to treat the read­er as a friend, Enright’s point that descrip­tion con­veys opin­ion, and Ford’s injunc­tion not to write reviews (or at least, as I read it, not reviews as so nar­row­ly defined).

Some of these tips have to do with tech­nique: Ford advis­es against drink­ing while writ­ing, Franzen advis­es against using “then” as a con­junc­tion, and Enright advis­es you sim­ply to keep putting words on the page. Oth­ers have more to do with main­tain­ing a cer­tain tem­pera­ment: “Don’t have argu­ments with your wife in the morn­ing, or late at night,” says Ford; “You have to love before you can be relent­less,” says Franzen; “Have fun,” says Enright. And as any suc­cess­ful writer knows, you can’t pull it off at all with­out a strong dose of prac­ti­cal­i­ty, as exem­pli­fied by Enright’s “Try to be accu­rate about stuff,” Franzen’s doubt that “any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion at his work­place is writ­ing good fic­tion,” and Ford’s “Don’t have chil­dren.” Can we draw out an over­ar­ch­ing guide­line? Avoid dis­trac­tion, per­haps. But you real­ly have to read these authors’ lists in full, like you would their nov­els, to grasp them. The lists below orig­i­nal­ly appeared in The Guardian, along with tips from var­i­ous oth­er esteemed writ­ers.

Richard Ford

1 Mar­ry some­body you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.

2 Don’t have chil­dren.

3 Don’t read your reviews.

4 Don’t write reviews. (Your judg­men­t’s always taint­ed.)

5 Don’t have argu­ments with your wife in the morn­ing, or late at night.

6 Don’t drink and write at the same time.

7 Don’t write let­ters to the edi­tor. (No one cares.)

8 Don’t wish ill on your col­leagues.

9 Try to think of oth­ers’ good luck as encour­age­ment to your­self.

10 Don’t take any shit if you can ­pos­si­bly help it.

 

Jonathan Franzen

1 The read­er is a friend, not an adver­sary, not a spec­ta­tor.

2 Fic­tion that isn’t an author’s per­son­al adven­ture into the fright­en­ing or the unknown isn’t worth writ­ing for any­thing but mon­ey.

3 Nev­er use the word “then” as a ­con­junc­tion – we have “and” for this pur­pose. Sub­sti­tut­ing “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solu­tion to the prob­lem of too many “ands” on the page.

4 Write in the third per­son unless a ­real­ly dis­tinc­tive first-per­son voice ­offers itself irre­sistibly.

5 When infor­ma­tion becomes free and uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble, volu­mi­nous research for a nov­el is deval­ued along with it.

6 The most pure­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal ­fic­tion requires pure inven­tion. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical sto­ry than “The Meta­morphosis”.

7 You see more sit­ting still than chas­ing after.

8 It’s doubt­ful that any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion at his work­place is writ­ing good fic­tion.

9 Inter­est­ing verbs are sel­dom very inter­est­ing.

10 You have to love before you can be relent­less.

 

Anne Enright

1 The first 12 years are the worst.

2 The way to write a book is to actu­al­ly write a book. A pen is use­ful, typ­ing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

3 Only bad writ­ers think that their work is real­ly good.

4 Descrip­tion is hard. Remem­ber that all descrip­tion is an opin­ion about the world. Find a place to stand.

5 Write what­ev­er way you like. Fic­tion is made of words on a page; real­i­ty is made of some­thing else. It does­n’t mat­ter how “real” your sto­ry is, or how “made up”: what mat­ters is its neces­si­ty.

6 Try to be accu­rate about stuff.

7 Imag­ine that you are dying. If you had a ter­mi­nal dis­ease would you ­fin­ish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop argu­ing with your­self. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

8 You can also do all that with whiskey.

9 Have fun.

10 Remem­ber, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­count­ing week­ends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your tem­per, but it fix­es some­thing else. It makes you more free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fizger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

Elmore Leonard’s Ulti­mate Guide for Would-Be Writ­ers

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Who’s Who on a Movie Crew: An Animated Primer

in Film | August 13th, 2013

Next time the cred­its are rolling, stick around so you can edu­cate your fel­low audi­ence mem­bers on what exact­ly a gaffer does.

This is but one of the mys­ter­ies addressed in Who’s Who on a Movie Crew, a campy but unde­ni­ably infor­ma­tive primer on film set respon­si­bil­i­ties and hier­ar­chies. Some job details get glossed over — grips have far more to keep track of than can ever fit in a rhyming cou­plet — but it’s in keep­ing with the delib­er­ate­ly anachro­nis­tic  ani­ma­tion style and equip­ment. The breezy style makes for appro­pri­ate view­ing for all ages. Hun­dreds of star­ry-eyed young­sters (and their par­ents) stand to ben­e­fit.

Hon­ey, are you sure you want to be a pro­duc­tion assis­tant? 

More in-depth, non-rhyming expla­na­tions of the var­i­ous roles can be found on Vimeo’s Video School. Dit­to Pro­duc­er Chris­tine Vachon’s dishy how-to / mem­oir A Killer Life, which goes into key posi­tions that failed to make the Video School cut, such as park­ing man­ag­er and cater­er (when you’re starv­ing and bored, there’s no one who’s greater-er….)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film Before the Film: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry of Title Sequences in 10 Min­utes

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teach­ing List of 87 Essen­tial Films Every Aspir­ing Direc­tor Should See

Ayun Hal­l­i­day appears as the least believ­able female cop in NYC in an upcom­ing short adap­tion of Ita­lo Calvi­no’s The Man Who Only Came Out at Night. Fol­low her at @AyunHalliday.

Watch Werner Herzog’s From One Second to the Next, an Eye-Opening Film Reveals the Dangers of Texting While Driving

in Film | August 12th, 2013

Soon after I start­ed dri­ving, back in high school, I got a mobile phone capa­ble of SMS mes­sag­ing. As with any tech­nol­o­gy not yet wide­spread, it then seemed more nov­el­ty than con­ve­nience; I hard­ly knew any­body else with a cell­phone, much less with one capa­ble of receiv­ing my mes­sages. But in the inter­ven­ing dozen years, every­one start­ed tex­ting, and the prac­tice turned from odd­i­ty into near-neces­si­ty, no mat­ter the time, no mat­ter the place.

Now, hav­ing tak­en for grant­ed the abil­i­ty to instant­ly send short mes­sages across the city, coun­try, or world to one anoth­er, soci­ety has, inevitably, begun to focus on the asso­ci­at­ed dan­gers of tex­ting. But few of us have thought quite as hard about them as has Wern­er Her­zog, direc­tor of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitz­car­ral­do, Cave of For­got­ten Dreams, and now a doc­u­men­tary against tex­ting while dri­ving. But don’t peo­ple already know the dan­gers? Haven’t pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments cau­tioned them not to do it, and stiff, fee-threat­en­ing laws gone on the books across Amer­i­ca?

Judg­ing by the sud­den pop­u­lar­i­ty of Her­zog’s new 35-minute film From One Sec­ond to the Next, spon­sored by cell ser­vice provider AT&T, a Ger­man New Wave lumi­nary’s words car­ry more weight. “I’m not a par­tic­i­pant of tex­ting and dri­ving — or tex­ting at all,” many have already quot­ed him as say­ing, “but I see there’s some­thing going on in civ­i­liza­tion which is com­ing with great vehe­mence at us.” Despite not hav­ing dri­ven reg­u­lar­ly since high school, I do on my rare occa­sions at the wheel feel that strange­ly strong temp­ta­tion to text in motion. Hav­ing watched Her­zog’s unblink­ing take on the real-life con­se­quences of doing so — unpayably high med­ical bills at best, paral­y­sis and death at worst — I don’t see myself giv­ing in next time. Whether or not it sim­i­lar­ly effects the stu­dents of the 40,000 schools in which it will screen, it marks a vast improve­ment upon all the murky, heavy-hand­ed cau­tion­ary videos I remem­ber from my own dri­ver’s ed days. Per­haps what Her­zog did for Bad Lieu­tenant, he should now do for that class­room clas­sic Red Asphalt.

You can find From One Sec­ond to the Next in our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

An Evening with Wern­er Her­zog

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

See Patti Smith Give Two Dramatic Readings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl”

in Poetry | August 9th, 2013

We’ve brought you some choice tid­bits recent­ly from beat poet grand­dad­dy Allen Gins­berg, includ­ing his first record­ed read­ing of “Howl” and a glimpse of his anno­tat­ed col­lec­tion of pho­tographs. And we’ve also served up a few deli­cious treats from god­moth­er of punk poet­ry Pat­ti Smith, like her recount­ing of William S. Bur­roughs’ advice to writ­ers and a read­ing of Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca.

Today, we bring the two togeth­er, in two ver­sions of Smith read­ing Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl,” the orgias­tic coda to his 1955 epic. This makes so much sense I won­der why we haven’t fea­tured it before, and yet, here we are. In the first ren­di­tion, above, from 2012, Smith is backed by Philip Glass, her own Incred­i­ble Band, and some saf­fron-clad Tibetan monks. The ensem­ble con­vened in hon­or of a vis­it by the Dalai Lama.

There are doubt­less dozens of sto­ries to tell about Gins­berg and Smith. My favorite is their first chance meet­ing in 1969:

It’s Novem­ber 1969 and Ms. Smith is try­ing to buy a cheese sand­wich at the Horn & Hardart Automat on West 23rd Street in Man­hat­tan. When she finds her­self a dime short, Gins­berg approach­es her and asks if he can help. He offers her the extra 10 cents and also treats her to a cup of cof­fee. The two are talk­ing about Walt Whit­man when Gins­berg sud­den­ly leans for­ward and asks if she’s a girl.

“Is that a prob­lem?” she asks.

He laughs and says: “I’m sor­ry. I took you for a very pret­ty boy.”

“Well, does this mean I return the sand­wich?”

“No, enjoy it. It was my mis­take.”

Holy that sand­wich! Watch Smith above in Flo­rence, Italy forty years lat­er, chant­i­ng a cap­pel­la from “Foot­note to Howl” while the audi­ence claps, and howls, along. It’s decid­ed­ly rough footage, tak­en with a hand­held cam­era (cell phone?) from the crowd, but the audio is good, and it’s stir­ring stuff despite, or because of, the raw qual­i­ty.

Head over to The Allen Gins­berg Project for a few more record­ings of Smith read­ing from “Howl.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

14-Year-Old Girl’s Blistering Heavy Metal Performance of Vivaldi

in Music | August 8th, 2013

She is 14 years old, and appar­ent­ly French. Not much else is known about this pre­co­cious young gui­tarist who goes by the name “Tina S” on her YouTube chan­nel.

Tina became an Inter­net sen­sa­tion in late May, when she post­ed an aston­ish­ing cov­er ver­sion of “Erup­tion,” from Van Halen’s debut album. Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolf­gang was so impressed he tweet­ed, “I need to meet this girl!!!”

Writ­ing as “@Tina_Guitare,” the young musi­cian replied, “I need to meet you too! Haha :))” Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres also went on Twit­ter and said, “This girl is incred­i­ble. If you know where she is, I want her on my show imme­di­ate­ly.” There was no reply to that one — at least not on Twit­ter.

Now Tina is back with a new video, made by her teacher Renaud Louis-Ser­vais, in which she rips through a cov­er of “Vival­di Trib­ute,” Patrick Ron­dat’s speed met­al adap­ta­tion of the cli­mac­tic “Presto” (very fast) move­ment of the Baroque com­pos­er Anto­nio Vivaldi’s “Sum­mer” con­cer­to from The Four Sea­sons. It’s an amaz­ing per­for­mance for a 14-year-old, although you should also see her play­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar when she was nine.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Hear the Never-Before-Released Bob Dylan Song “Pretty Saro” (1970)

in Music | August 8th, 2013

I recent­ly read an arti­cle in which a music crit­ic argued for Bob Dylan’s 1970 dou­ble album Self Por­trait as his best. This pro­voked so much deri­sion and out­rage in the com­ments that I almost felt sor­ry for the author. But this is not unusu­al. Rolling Stone’s Greil Mar­cus opened his review of the record with a surly “What is this shit?” Dylan him­self explained in a 1984 inter­view with the mag­a­zine that the record was inten­tion­al­ly bad, a “screw you” to his less dis­cern­ing fans. And why not? Bob Dylan can do what­ev­er he wants.

Well, the album The Onion’s AV Club calls “almost uni­ver­sal­ly loathed” is being reis­sued in a four-disc set that includes out­takes and bootlegs, as well as alter­nates and demo takes from Nashville Sky­line and 1970’s New Morn­ing. You’ll find the full track­list of what will be released on August 27 as Anoth­er Self Por­trait here. (The album itself can be pre-ordered here.) For a pre­view, watch the video above of “Pret­ty Saro,” an 18^th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish folk tune Dylan record­ed for Self Por­trait but nev­er released. As with Mar­cus’ review and Dylan’s explana­to­ry inter­view, this comes to us via the stal­wart Rolling Stone.

Film­mak­er Jen­nifer Lebeau made the video, which con­sists of care­ful­ly select­ed pho­tos from the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and which Lebeau says “lit­er­al­ly goes from women on farms with wag­ons to Rosie the Riv­et­er.” It’s a cool con­cept and a beau­ti­ful song. Might it per­suade you to re-eval­u­ate Self Por­trait? If you nev­er loathed it but defend­ed it, does this out­take enhance your appre­ci­a­tion of its genius? Maybe you’re in need of a refresh­er on the con­fused, amused, and infu­ri­at­ed reac­tions that this record gen­er­ates. If so, you may wish to vis­it this site for “24 min­utes of footage of peo­ple talk­ing about Bob Dylan’s puz­zling” 1970 album.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Bob Dylan, Nico & Sal­vador Dalí

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Master of Light: A Close Look at the Paintings of Johannes Vermeer Narrated by Meryl Streep

in Art, Film | August 8th, 2013

We all thrilled to Johannes Ver­meer paint­ing his best-known por­trait as dra­ma­tized in Peter Web­ber’s 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. But for every height­ened, scin­til­lat­ing fea­ture film built around a well-known artist, there exists — or should exist, any­way — a doc­u­men­tary that exam­ines the work itself in greater detail. For such a coun­ter­part to the afore­men­tioned Col­in Firth/Scarlett Johans­son vehi­cle, I nom­i­nate Joe Krako­ra’s 2001 Ver­meer: Mas­ter of Light, a rich look at the paint­ings of the well-known visu­al chron­i­cler of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry mid­dle-class Dutch life, whose use of col­or could reach pret­ty for­mi­da­ble heights of scin­til­la­tion itself. Pro­vid­ing its nar­ra­tion, we have a cer­tain Meryl Streep.

Click each image for a larg­er ver­sion

Streep­’s words and those of the doc­u­men­tary’s expert inter­vie­wees must of neces­si­ty focus on Ver­meer’s actu­al paint­ings, since we know lit­tle of the painter’s life. And we don’t even have very many paint­ings to talk about: liv­ing from 1632 to 1672, Ver­meer turned out few­er than 40 can­vas­es. But what can­vas­es: Mas­ter of Light goes into detail on his par­tic­u­lar mas­tery not only of light and col­or, but of tex­tures, per­spec­tives, and seem­ing­ly minor but nonethe­less painstak­ing touch­es. We do, how­ev­er, offer a view­ing tip: unless you par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy shots of light through win­dows, you may want to begin the video at 5:22 or so. The analy­sis of Ver­meer takes its time com­ing, but when it begins, it offers a wealth of sur­pris­ing detail — just as do the paint­ings them­selves. But don’t believe me; find out for your­self by view­ing fif­teen of them up close at the Google Art Project, includ­ing Lady at the Vir­ginal with a Gen­tle­man just above, or, below, The Love Let­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

Ver­meer with a BiC

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Trip to the Moon (and Five Other Free Films) by Georges Méliès, the Father of Special Effects

in Film | August 7th, 2013

If you’ve tak­en a film stud­ies course, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen the work of Georges Méliès. His 1902 short A Trip to the Moon, at the top, which some cin­e­ma schol­ars cite as the pic­ture where spe­cial effects as we know them began, has a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant place in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Nobody who watch­es that four­teen-minute pro­duc­tion ever for­gets the image of the moon’s con­ster­na­tion after the pro­tag­o­nists’ space­craft crash­es into it. And the rest of the movie, if nar­ra­tive­ly shaky, still has an impres­sive visu­al pow­er. If any­body had both suf­fi­cient imag­i­na­tion and suf­fi­cient know-how to com­mit such a voy­age to that cut­ting-edge medi­um known as motion film over a cen­tu­ry ago, the the­ater own­er and sea­soned illu­sion­ist Méliès did. Charged by the cin­e­mat­ic pio­neer­ing of his coun­try­men the Lumière broth­ers, he began doing it in 1896, and con­tin­ued until 1913, which makes A Trip to the Moon a mid-career high­light.

A mid-career high­light, that is, along­side 1904’s The Impos­si­ble Voy­age (just above), which con­tin­ues in the same vein of Jules Verne-style fan­tas­ti­cal sci­ence fic­tion. This time, in fact, Méliès took not just the sen­si­bil­i­ty from Verne but, in part, a sto­ry, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from Verne’s play Jour­ney Through the Impos­si­ble about a young Dan­ish baron tempt­ed to trav­el to far-off lands, plan­ets, and real­i­ties. He wrote into this sequel, of sorts, a nat­ur­al des­ti­na­tion: the sun. MUBI.com’s “pub­lic domain greats” page offers a list of these and oth­er Méliès films avail­able free to watch online, the likes of which inspired Mar­tin Scors­ese to adapt Bri­an Selznick­’s Méliès-cen­tric nov­el The Inven­tion of Hugo Cabret into Hugo, a film visu­al­ly inven­tive by the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry’s stan­dards just as A Voy­age to the Moon excelled by the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry’s. Those films cur­rent­ly avail­able include:

• A Trip to the Moon (1902)
• The Infer­nal Caul­dron (1903)
• The Impos­si­ble Voy­age (1904)
• The Liv­ing Play­ing Cards (1905)
• The Hilar­i­ous Posters (1906)
• The Dev­il­ish Ten­ant (1909)

They will all be added to our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

The Birth of Film: 11 Firsts in Cin­e­ma

The Ear­ly Days of Ani­ma­tion Pre­served in UCLA’s Video Archive

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Handwritten Casting Notes for The Godfather

in Film | August 7th, 2013

Lau­rence Olivi­er as Vito Cor­leone? Dustin Hoff­man as Michael? Those are two of the intrigu­ing options direc­tor Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la was appar­ent­ly mulling over when he jot­ted down these notes while prepar­ing to make his clas­sic 1972 film The God­fa­ther.

The cast­ing of The God­fa­ther was a noto­ri­ous­ly con­tentious affair. Exec­u­tives at Para­mount Pic­tures thought Mar­lon Bran­do — Cop­po­la’s first choice to play Mafia “God­fa­ther” Vito — was too dif­fi­cult to work with. They thought Al Paci­no was too short to play his son Michael.

“The war over cast­ing the fam­i­ly Cor­leone was more volatile than the war the Cor­leone fam­i­ly fought on screen,” writes for­mer Para­mount head of pro­duc­tion Robert Evans in his mem­oir, The Kid Stays in the Pic­ture. At one point the stu­dio want­ed Dan­ny Thomas to play Vito and War­ren Beat­ty to play Michael. A long list of lead­ing Hol­ly­wood actors were con­sid­ered for the role of Michael, includ­ing Robert Red­ford, Ryan O’Neal and Jack Nichol­son.

Cop­po­la even­tu­al­ly set­tled on Paci­no as the cere­bral Michael and the lit­tle-known Carmine Cari­di as Michael’s tough-guy old­er broth­er, Son­ny. Evans told the direc­tor he could have one but not both. In a pas­sage from the book, quot­ed in Mark Seal’s 2009 Van­i­ty Fair piece, “The God­fa­ther Wars,” Evans describes a tense meet­ing with Cop­po­la:

“You’ve got Paci­no on one con­di­tion, Fran­cis.”

“What’s that?”

“Jim­my Caan plays Son­ny.”

“Carmine Caridi’s signed. He’s right for the role. Any­way, Caan’s a Jew. He’s not Ital­ian.”

“Yeah, but he’s not six five, he’s five ten. This aint Mutt and Jeff. This kid Paci­no’s five five, and that’s in heels.”

“I’m not using Caan.”

“I’m not using Paci­no.”

Slam went the door. Ten min­utes lat­er, the door opened. “You win.”

For more on the cast­ing of The God­fa­ther, includ­ing excerpts from screen tests and remem­brances from Cop­po­la and oth­ers, see our ear­li­er post “A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Cast­ing of The God­fa­ther with Cop­po­la, De Niro & Caan.”

via A.V. Club

The Historic Meeting Between Dickens and Dostoevsky Revealed as a Great Literary Hoax

in Literature | August 7th, 2013

Giv­en the way nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture is some­times conceived—as the spe­cial province of a few great, hairy celebri­ty novelists—one might imag­ine that a meet­ing between Charles Dick­ens and Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky would not be an unusu­al occur­rence. Maybe it was even rou­tine, like Jay Z and Kanye bump­ing elbows at a par­ty! So when I read that the two had once met, in Lon­don in 1862, my first thought was, “well, sure. And then Her­man Melville and Gus­tave Flaubert stopped by, and they got into a brawl over the check.” Alright, that’s ridicu­lous. Melville didn’t achieve any degree of fame until after his death, after all, and while the oth­er three were respect­ed, even wild­ly famous (in Dick­ens’ case), it is unlike­ly they read much of each oth­er, much less trav­eled hun­dreds of miles for per­son­al vis­its.

And yet, the sto­ry of Dick­ens and Dostoevsky—since revealed to be as much a fab­ri­ca­tion as the image above—was plau­si­ble enough to find pur­chase in two recent Dick­ens biogra­phies. Though the two men had vast­ly dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ties, their shared expe­ri­ences of the seami­er side of life, and their sprawl­ing seri­al­ized nov­els cat­a­logu­ing their time’s social ills in great detail, would seem like­ly to draw them togeth­er. New York Times lit­er­ary crit­ic Michiko Kaku­tani seemed to think so when she repeat­ed the sto­ry as told in Claire Tomalin’s 2011 Charles Dick­ens, A Life. Tomalin—who found the sto­ry in the Dick­en­sian, the jour­nal of the Dick­ens Fel­low­ship, and report­ed it in good faith—recounts how the Russ­ian nov­el­ist inten­tion­al­ly sought out his Eng­lish coun­ter­part in Lon­don, and, upon find­ing him, heard Dick­ens bare his soul, con­fess­ing that he longed to be like his hon­est, sim­ple char­ac­ters, but used his own per­son­al fail­ings to con­struct his vil­lains.

The sto­ry might still have cur­ren­cy had not sev­er­al Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture schol­ars read Kakutani’s review and found it far too cred­u­lous: Why would Dos­to­evsky have only men­tioned the encounter in a let­ter writ­ten six­teen years after the fact, a let­ter no schol­ar has seen? What lan­guage would the two men have in common—and if they had one, prob­a­bly French, would they be flu­ent enough to have a heart to heart? And even if Dos­to­evsky vis­it­ed Lon­don in 1862, as it seems, he did, would he have inten­tion­al­ly sought out Charles Dick­ens? Eric Naiman, pro­fes­sor of Slav­ic Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­tures at UC Berke­ley, doubt­ed all of this, and, in under­tak­ing some research, found it to be the elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion of a man named A.D. Har­vey, who has cre­at­ed for him­self a coterie of fic­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic iden­ti­ties so thor­ough as to con­sti­tute what Naiman calls a “com­mu­ni­ty of schol­ars who can analyse, sup­ple­ment and occa­sion­al­ly even ruth­less­ly crit­i­cise each oth­er’s work.”

As far as lit­er­ary hoax­ers go, Har­vey is quite accom­plished. You may find his story—driven, as such things often are, by wound­ed ego, mis­placed tal­ent, van­i­ty, and frus­trat­ed ambition—much more inter­est­ing than any sup­posed tête-à-tête between the Russ­ian and British nov­el­ists. A recent Guardian piece pro­files the “man behind the great Dick­ens and Dos­to­evsky hoax,” and Eric Naiman’s exhaus­tive Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment expose of the hoax shows us just how deeply embed­ded such spu­ri­ous lore can become in a lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty before it can be root­ed out by skep­ti­cal schol­ars. The les­son here is trite, I guess. Don’t believe every­thing you read. But when we’re inclined—mostly for good reasons—to trust the word of those who pose as experts and author­i­ties, this can be a hard les­son to heed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find works by Dos­to­evsky and Dick­ens in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Watch Piotr Dumala’s Won­der­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka and Dos­to­evsky

Cel­e­brate the 200th Birth­day of Charles Dick­ens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness