this morning about
our interview. So I called the Sherry-Netherland, and soon had Brant on the
line, sounding gruff but friendly. I identified myself, and reminded him of the
interview, and he said, “Well, what about right now?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m
downtown.”
“Then come uptown,” he said, and
chuckled, and broke the connection.
I pocketed half a dozen of Kit’s Valiums, my
own supply being in captured territory. “Get well soon,” I told Kit,
and kissed her irritable cold cheek, and went out into the disgusting world.
*
Q: “In your film, Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow , what is the symbolism of the repeated
appearance of the small black dog in the background of so many of the
shots?”
A: “Oh, yeah, that damn dog. Well, I’ll
tell you, that’s a funny story. That was Sassi’s dog,
you know. Wha’d she call that damn
thing? Rudolph, that was it. Anyway, that was her
third—no, second—her second feature with American Artists. She was shacked up
with Kleinberg then, you know, so he’d give her anything she wanted. She wasn’t
even supposed to be in that picture, only Kate said she wouldn’t work for
Kleinberg for any amount of money, and Kleinberg left the script around in the
bathroom or some damn place, and Sassi read it and said, I wanna do that
picture. So we were stuck with her. And she had this shitty little dog,
Rudolph, and that dog wasn’t trained at all Run around, you couldn’t control
it, and finally I just said shit, I said, let the damn little thing stay in
there, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Just so it doesn’t get in the airplane
sequence, that’s all, and you know, it damn near did. Just about the end of the
picture, the shitty little thing got itself run over by an Oregon state trooper. Sassi tried to get the
fellow fired, but Kleinberg didn’t run Oregon, so that was that.”
The interview was not going at all well. I
suppose it was mostly my fault, since I was distracted by the problem of
Edgarson, but Big John Brant wasn’t helping very much. No matter what I asked
him, from the broadest possible questions about thematic undercurrents to the
narrowest points of technique, all I got back were these rambling reminiscences
about nothing in particular. Scatology and gossip seemed to be his only
subjects.
And I’d spent sixty dollars on a cassette
recorder to preserve this tripe. It wasn’t until after I’d left Kit’s place
that I’d realized I was carrying none of my normal interviewing tools, so when
I’d reached midtown I’d bought a pen and a pad and this cheap little recorder,
and all I was recording so far was sex and shit.
Nevertheless, it’s my own conviction that a
bad interview is never really the interviewee’s fault. There are two
participants in an interview, but only one of them is supposed to be
professional. I’ve interviewed actors with an IQ of seven and managed to make
them sound at least competent, if not brilliant. It was the Edgarson business
that was clouding my mind, with the result that I was permitting Brant to
maunder along with virtually no guidance at all.
The setting also encouraged this feckless
informality. Brant had a high-floor suite here at the Sherry-Netherland, with
windows overlooking Central
Park and the
Plaza, where the still-falling snow made the world look like a Currier &
Ives Christmas card that had inadvertently gone through the washing machine. A
tall and slender and mind-crunchingly beautiful girl came into the room from
time to time to add another couple of logs to the fire. Brant and I both sipped
bourbon over ice as we sat before the crackling flames, and the contrast
between this warm beautiful room and the cold snowy aspect of Central Park almost demanded a discursive droning
conversational style, in which nothing could get accomplished.
Brant, too, was a problem. An old man now,
with liver spots on hands and forehead, with great knobby knuckles and wrists,
with that old man’s style of
our interview. So I called the Sherry-Netherland, and soon had Brant on the
line, sounding gruff but friendly. I identified myself, and reminded him of the
interview, and he said, “Well, what about right now?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m
downtown.”
“Then come uptown,” he said, and
chuckled, and broke the connection.
I pocketed half a dozen of Kit’s Valiums, my
own supply being in captured territory. “Get well soon,” I told Kit,
and kissed her irritable cold cheek, and went out into the disgusting world.
*
Q: “In your film, Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow , what is the symbolism of the repeated
appearance of the small black dog in the background of so many of the
shots?”
A: “Oh, yeah, that damn dog. Well, I’ll
tell you, that’s a funny story. That was Sassi’s dog,
you know. Wha’d she call that damn
thing? Rudolph, that was it. Anyway, that was her
third—no, second—her second feature with American Artists. She was shacked up
with Kleinberg then, you know, so he’d give her anything she wanted. She wasn’t
even supposed to be in that picture, only Kate said she wouldn’t work for
Kleinberg for any amount of money, and Kleinberg left the script around in the
bathroom or some damn place, and Sassi read it and said, I wanna do that
picture. So we were stuck with her. And she had this shitty little dog,
Rudolph, and that dog wasn’t trained at all Run around, you couldn’t control
it, and finally I just said shit, I said, let the damn little thing stay in
there, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Just so it doesn’t get in the airplane
sequence, that’s all, and you know, it damn near did. Just about the end of the
picture, the shitty little thing got itself run over by an Oregon state trooper. Sassi tried to get the
fellow fired, but Kleinberg didn’t run Oregon, so that was that.”
The interview was not going at all well. I
suppose it was mostly my fault, since I was distracted by the problem of
Edgarson, but Big John Brant wasn’t helping very much. No matter what I asked
him, from the broadest possible questions about thematic undercurrents to the
narrowest points of technique, all I got back were these rambling reminiscences
about nothing in particular. Scatology and gossip seemed to be his only
subjects.
And I’d spent sixty dollars on a cassette
recorder to preserve this tripe. It wasn’t until after I’d left Kit’s place
that I’d realized I was carrying none of my normal interviewing tools, so when
I’d reached midtown I’d bought a pen and a pad and this cheap little recorder,
and all I was recording so far was sex and shit.
Nevertheless, it’s my own conviction that a
bad interview is never really the interviewee’s fault. There are two
participants in an interview, but only one of them is supposed to be
professional. I’ve interviewed actors with an IQ of seven and managed to make
them sound at least competent, if not brilliant. It was the Edgarson business
that was clouding my mind, with the result that I was permitting Brant to
maunder along with virtually no guidance at all.
The setting also encouraged this feckless
informality. Brant had a high-floor suite here at the Sherry-Netherland, with
windows overlooking Central
Park and the
Plaza, where the still-falling snow made the world look like a Currier &
Ives Christmas card that had inadvertently gone through the washing machine. A
tall and slender and mind-crunchingly beautiful girl came into the room from
time to time to add another couple of logs to the fire. Brant and I both sipped
bourbon over ice as we sat before the crackling flames, and the contrast
between this warm beautiful room and the cold snowy aspect of Central Park almost demanded a discursive droning
conversational style, in which nothing could get accomplished.
Brant, too, was a problem. An old man now,
with liver spots on hands and forehead, with great knobby knuckles and wrists,
with that old man’s style of
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