The American Short Story (1977)

[Music] sometimes when I'm uh with my students uh I'm reminded of the anguish I went through in trying to invent myself I'm sure you went through exactly the same wrenching process yourself and still to [Music] a [Music] for me it's perhaps other than the poem the most compressed uh medium and art that we have as a culture and since the short story like the motion picture is indigenous to to the American culture it's a form that I've Loved reading and it's a form that I've Loved teaching and it's a form that I love attempting to write myself and that it it's about the most compressed uh written form uh that you can share with an audience and since the American short story didn't have it its birth in a in a paperback full-blown M uh it was designed for people in a hurry who were writing the trolley cars who read them in newspapers and magazines and in serialized fashion right uh it is uh the perhaps the format which should entice people who are part of that fast food culture the caveat being that it's a fast food form with substance the American short story is not meant just to be a pulp thriller or a way to fill in a half power of your life it can be read several times certainly then a short story is more than a chapter in a novel I'm suggesting it's more and less and that it's it's not leading to the next chapter uh it is of itself a contained experience and with that constraint fact that when it's over even though in most cases it doesn't resolve anything the way a a full novel does uh the chapter of a novel is to lead us uh to either the next suspensful event the growth of the character the short story and it's it's very compression MH uh indicates within those few pages that a total experience uh has occurred for a major character and hopefully for the reader I was wondering I you've done you've read many many short stories in preparation for the series did you find the protagonists in the American short story any different from those that you would find in novels I think I would qualify by merely saying that the the novel of the last 10 years in America uh comes closest to the short story of the last 100 years in terms of its Central character uh if you think of Saul Bellow or any of updike's more recent work or John chever they are characters who are not swashbuckling uh gigantic mythological characters there are people who undergo the same daily pressures uh the same indecisiveness that the characters in the short story undergo but that's a recent phenomenon for the novel and certainly I'm not sure that that people are going to be forever after wanting to read novels about next door neighbors what the short story I think intentionally sets out to do is to give us a chance to see our neighbors in a more perceptive light uh and it may be an act of Artful audacity of boldness to say we're asking you to look at people who are not living lives that are um so terribly romantic and adventuresome uh B are you saying then that U Andy in U I'm a Fool mhm ber in Bernice Bobs her hair and uh Dave David in u the Richard Wright story are all very much like us they're just regular people uh struggling I think the uh the danar the way the stories end uh and we don't want to tip that off now may be more dramatic than life is itself but the uh the conflicts that the characters undergo Andy in I'm a Fool uh is caught in something that we all do every day of our lives in terms of inadvertently or not stretching a truth in order to win favor how do you do I'm Walter L Mathers Junior of Marietta Ohio my family has this place down on the Ohio River big old house kind of Stuffy for some taste maybe but we have the most beautiful Stables you've ever seen Henry would you like a cigar Bernice uh uh even though supposedly the the role of woman has changed dramatically in the last 50 years since the 19th amendment is caught up and having to assimilate the social Mor Ray the dating patterns in order to win favor but now you have to perfect a pathetic look too why well it comes in handy in certain situations with men of course with men when you go east to school you're going to run into bab's Finley the one who got fired from Miss walkers oh well she's been fired from three schools that I know of maybe more anyway she has probably got the greatest pathetic look of any girl in our generation how do you do it open your eyes wide and you droop your bottom lip and you look straight into the Man's eyes and say I hardly have any bows at all I hardly have any bows at all not fat and certainly uh David in Richard Wright story uh a young black yolked to a plow uh depended upon his family really having no place to go except out of that environment is not a dated character come on Jenny this here's the last road to day tell you something I'd be glad it is it's you to way you draging he's ground so hard I hatte it when he gets this way the three of them are young adults yeah and yet they appear to me and I I hope they will be for our audience is to be young adults with whom we can identify for all time I know you've been very concerned with u with Fidelity between short story and the film that you make I was really surprised when I read Soldiers Home to find that uh a character named Kenner was not in the story The Soldier's home is about a young man who needs time and he needs to process things internally the way we try to find at least visual analoges visual equivalents for krebs's Agony is angst is to not invent characters who don't appear within his own interior experience he talks about meeting other soldiers Christ what do you want to do just mope around forever can't figure you whenever I want to forget about things I just just drink drink and find a woman I want to remember good things like being over there scared to death watching your guy screaming and bleeding to death I wasn't scared not like you tell it damn everybody was you ever wake up in the sweats and shivers I used to stuff my blanket in my mouth so I wouldn't was scared everybody was that's a liive everybody was only one thing worth remembering over there damn oh faces those white bodies smelling like sweet apricots in those War hotel room that isn't worth remembering all right so what is worth remembering being a good soldier doing what you had to do being a good soldier you're you're crazy Krebs you really are and you lie Kenna about everything don't call me a lie it's not worth it shut up hey you all right I don't need a friend like you hey wait go on go on killer what I did as as adapter uh with the very careful advice of two Hemingway Scholars is try to find a visual uh dimensional equivalent of what was going on in Harold krebs's mind and I hope we've been uh as faithful to the Hemingway as we have been to the other writers in the series when I read uh sherid Anderson's paragraph about young Andy uh putting on a derby hat and uh walking about town into the bar uh acting tough more experienced than of course he was I was struck that uh when you filmed that it was far more Vivid than that Anderson paragraph [Music] I think if if we succeed uh with the Anderson story and with hopefully all of the stories in the series it's because of the ability to do what film should do successfully if it's going to attempt to translate great literature it should work well within its own medium and the medium of film uh dwell is physical gesture it's the ability to portray action in in one movement uh which is done well but done in a much different uh format than obviously the printed page I love that um moment when you had Bert straighten Andy's tie and I also noticed you changed the um the bumping in the story to the young man offering uh or asking to have a cigarette lit yes why did you do that sometimes those things are are not merely accidents they're they're parts of collaboration As you move into the uh the filming I'm not sure whether uh Bert very uh gently straightening Andy's tie which is about as as paternalistic and gentle a thing uh as a father can do for a son I'm not sure whose suggestion it was but certainly it was our attempt to to make Vivid something that's more than hinted at in in Sherwood Anderson's story hey you you go some place special BKE you think you could 10 things without me today I I want to walk around and see this place might even buy myself a grandstand ticket and sit with all the [Music] dudes look for some coming that it do I look all right no come here you know what you need to look like a real swell a d I take it then that um various kinds of visual Clues uh or I what What actors call stage businesses is very important and to to uh making uh points about character B it's it's the excitement and the Mystery of film making if it's done well and I think it's it's one of the most important just uh justifications for translating fiction and not letting it sit on Dusty shells which is what has happened to too many short stories in the last 20 years I think is reflected in in films like Bernice Bobs or hair if you remember the scene uh right after the dance when her cousin is talking to her mother behind a closed door and we hear what Bernice hears that she's an absolute drag uh and the way she kind of slumps and walks into her room and we move to her on her bed uh with the hint but not a total giveaway of her braiding her hair and just the the sound of what what's sounds like a broken heart done probably within 15 seconds uh that's the magic of film making the magic of uh what happens in U Ernest Hemingway's solders home uh when Harold Krebs comes home the first night and just the way he undoes his button [Music] [Music] B are you saying that um this is one of the advantages in switching from the print mode to the film mode uh being able to to uh deal with physical action uh in in in such an an incredibly concrete way that um uh I think I'd respond to the question by by saying it's not an advantage and I don't mean to be defensive about it I think the the short story is a very private uh human experience as is any reading experience uh and to say that reading Richard Wright uh in the quiet comfort of our study or uh in our bedroom or wherever we we find our reading most relaxed and privileged that experience in no way uh is improved for a human being by seeing it on film and I'm being very honest about this I think what what the advantage of of translating to film through physical image is is that it does make it something that's accessible to lots of people at one time uh and I really don't want to uh be in the position of of either defending the story which will survive if people continue to read it and that's been one of our concerns that the short story is not being read there is no outlet for it and perhaps film will not legitimatize it but it will reintroduce people who have loved uh good short stories and certainly for new Young audiences part of our our fast food on the Move culture uh who may never have heard of Richard Wright quite literally or Ambrose beer uh uh or John Updike that it will make palatable not as a sugarcoated introduction to literature right introduce them to characters who become important because they've seen them MH and then go back to the private experience of being able to read that chapter uh I don't think anything is lost I don't see how younger audiences can resist the plight of Andy Beres and David we would hope so what we hoped is that the stories would appeal to to younger readers certainly but the appeal would be based on the things that maybe they're afraid to express to their own friends or their own teachers or their own parents and through the vehicle of the story and the film will recognize that that writers of centuries gone by or at least 50 years ago were experiencing the same Growing Pains the same same sense of isolation of being an outsider the right of passage is not just limited to adolescence partly uh I noticed for example in uh John updikes the music school and um the James story Jolly Corner that both of those characters seem uh they're going through some incredibly um deep self assessment quite accurate and I think if one were to find a thread and not invent one that the choices of uh Spencer brighten and jolly corner and Alfred shyen who were obviously not kids they're not adolescents uh they are human beings in the middle point of their lives uh a theme that's that's quite common to us uh who sit here now and what Alfred shrien in music school and Spencer bride in the Jolly Corner are really all about is trying to make the same sense of of discovery that Bernice and Andy and David are trying to make in their lives what what is your hope for this film series in that light the answer to that Frank is is twofold uh and the first answer is interrelated and that our our goal had been to get new readers those who are new to our writers like Hemingway Updike and Fitzgerald and also older readers who've neglected some of the masses of American fiction to ReDiscover what our literary Heritage has been and along with that to make viewers of of this series much more articulate about how film can work what its responsibilities are not only in translating literature to film but how film can work hopefully with a degree of integrity and the second answer which I think think is more personally important to me is that having been lucky enough to have through the selection process found nine stories that are ambiguous they end with no Pat formula as does a good deal of of contemporary television they end with with questions not answered which is pretty much what pretty much what makes a short story so special and they do something else uh and they do it perhaps vicariously at first they say to an audience here's Andy having a his Growing Pains having told a lie or Bernice or Alfred span trying to survive some very stormy days undergoing experiences that are very very painful and what it says to an audience legitimatizing for them is feel don't be embarrassed because we are a culture and I think it's Unique to this culture which is split in that we we treasure our privacy it's been part of that Frontier spirit and at the same time we almost hunger for a chance of communal coming together usually during times of of great loss or grief or Jubilation and what the American short story series is attempting to do is to enable our readers and our viewers to begin to feel again and to feel without embarrassment with impunity and to begin to share those feelings with those who read and view the series with him [Music] oh pap [Music]