Interview with BUREAU Photographer James Gabbard : FLASH FORWARD

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BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE : THETOM DONAHUE INTERVIEW / CASTING BY

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Who could ever imagine an American film world without the likes of performers such as James Dean,  Jack Nicholson,  Al Pacino,  Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Glenn Close, Sissy Spacek,  Bette Midler,  Robert Duvall,  John Voight, Diane Lane and  Jeff Bridges ? Add to that list about a couple hundred other important contributors, including Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Norman Lear, John Sayles. Take it a step further and ask yourself what if someone else had been cast in their pinnacle roles in film?  Well, due to Marion Dougherty, a casting legend, we often have the perfect person for the role .


Tom Donahue directed a very engaging documentary all about Marion Dougherty  entitled, "Casting By". BUREAU Editor Joshua Triliegi spoke to Tom about the film, his prior documentary on Artist Cindy Sherman & the general process of film making. Since then, the film has been picked up by HBO Documentaries and won a bunch of festival awards. The gist of the film: Are casting professionals 'Directors' ? Are they, 'Casting Directors' ? Any actor will tell you: " Hell yeah." Apparently, no matter how many chime in, and many great directors too, it is still debated by the powers that be. The film's story  line takes us through, not just Marion's career, but the trajectory of many performers and ultimately through film history itself. Here at The BUREAU, we thoroughly love this film.


JT: Your first film was on Artist Cindy Sherman, What led you to this project and how were you first introduced to the subject ?


TD: "Guest of Cindy Sherman" came about from a phone call I got from artist Spencer Tunick (I had edited two HBO feature docs about him).  He told me about this guy, Paul H-O who is dating Cindy Sherman and sitting on a mass of amazing footage but had no real idea what to do with it.  Paul and I met and agreed to co-direct though we didn't exactly know what we were going to take at that point.  From the footage I saw, I could only see a first act.  A month or so later, Paul called me & told me he was going to do a monologue for a bunch of friends & that my producing partner and I should come check it out.  He thought this monologue might hold the key to the rest of the film.  He was right.  Paul titled it 'Guest of Cindy Sherman' and, in it, detailed the emotional crisis he was going through dating such a famous artist.  The monologue appears in the film. Now, we at least had the first two acts.  We wouldn't have the third until three years later when Cindy and Paul called it quits (partly due to the film).



JT: Your Most recent film, " Casting By " tells a personal story, but also a larger overall history and evolution of the film industry. How did you go about correlating the two with such a nice balance ?


TD: It was not easy. We culled through a mountain of 240 interviews (with lots of conflicting stories) and a seemingly limitless amount of archival material. There are actually three stories in the film. There is the story of Marion's career with Lynn Stalmaster playing counterpoint & then there is the story of the industry politics.  For a while, the film got away from me as I began interviewing people with no connection to Marion, opening the doc up to stories from multiple casting directors. This proved way too much.  We scaled back and refocused the doc on our primary character but now with the added benefit of a broader perspective. Note in the structure that Lynn's career is introduced through Marion's.  All of the film's themes remain tied to her story.

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Casting Choices :  Robert Redford,  William Shatner,  Warren Beatty,   Robert Duvall, James Dean,   Burt Reynolds,  Peter Fonda  and  Martin Sheen,  Christopher Walken 


JT: The editing in this picture is very smooth but rather complicated, so many interviews and personalities, was this the first time you worked with the editor ? How did you go about picking and choosing ? Was there an EDL [ Edit Decision List ] prior to inviting in The Editor ? 


TD: I had an amazing editor ( my wife, Jill Schweitzer ). The editing took eighteen months. Yes, this was the first time we worked together on such a large scale as director and editor. Initially, I would select from the transcripts and figure out the anecdotes and sequences we needed to build ( way too many, of course ).




JT: You sat in the room with some of the most brilliant Actors, Directors and Producers in the industry, What was it like to be interviewing some of your heroes, realizing that you were now one of their contemporaries ?


TD: I treated each interview like a masterclass in filmmaking. I learned more than I probably even realize. 



JT: The Film tells the story, as well as subtly advocates for the respect of Casting Directors in the industry, a somewhat controversial position up to this point. How did you see this challenge when you started the project ?


TD: I believed very strongly that casting directors needed to get their due. I never doubted that I had to take a very firm position on that.


JT: You went for two whole years, without turning a camera on, while your producers went searching for more finishing funds. What did you do during those years and did that reprieve allow you to review material and in the end, assist to make this picture what it is today ?


TD: I finished, went around to festivals & theatrically released 'Guest of Cindy Sherman'.  And I produced & edited the feature film, Ponies (starring John Ventimiglia and Kevin Corrigan). Once that was completed ( early 2010 ), I decided to go full steam ahead on Casting By, even without much money in place. After accumulating some amazing interviewees, we got our financing.  Sometimes you just need to do it.


JT: The interviews with your subject are heartfelt, honest & deeply moving. How did you get such an honest and open relationship with your subject and what advice do you have for Documentary film makers in this regard,


TD:  Be real.  Be open. Know that it's not about you. Don't talk too much. Listen. Listen.  Listen. Don't try to show how smart you are or what a good talker you are.  You are there to hear their stories. They don't need to hear yours. And in that regard, know what your objectives are. Know what you need to get and know that you are getting it. That said, be open to surprise and go with it. Never shut it down. Know when to interrupt & mostly, don't. Don't step on sentences. You never know. And acknowledge that you are listening in the silences. Finally, I don't use narration, so I try to make sure I am hearing complete, coherent sentences so my editor has what they need to tell the story.



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JT: The music is very effective and straight ahead, loyal to the period and moves the sections along nicely, Did you work with a team of sound designers and musicians ?


TD:  I have a brilliant composer named Leigh Roberts (Leigh scores White Collar, Graceland and has done work on House & Parenthood).  We started by spotting the cut together, identifying what our themes needed to be & where music needed to go.  We decided Marion needed two themes - A "process" theme, which we heard whenever we discussed the mechanics of casting and Marion's theme, which was more romantic, more about the magic of Marion and her gut instincts.  We gave Lynn a jazz-inflected theme to help differentiate his sequences.  In the end, Leigh composed sixty-two cues for the film, an incredible number.  I absolutely love his work on this picture.


JT: The re enactments and graphic realization using Photographs are extremely effective and completely service the story, how did you go about creating the graphic elements and who did you work with on these segments ?


TD: Michael Saul did an excellent job on all of the motion graphics. There is such amazing heart in his work. Ken Edge did the color illustration of key photographs. River Road Creative provided the tree/watercolor animation toward the end. My basic philosophy regarding animation, music, etc is to help keep the story moving, add to it emotionally and never get in the way.

 

JT: I understand you also have enough footage in the archive to create a series, Do you foresee another larger version and or continuing the saga on cable in some way ?


TD: We are hopeful that we can create a series with the additional interviews we gave ( 180 ! ) and will explore the possibilities down the road. Needless to say, there is a lot 

of great material !


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PLUSH : COLLIN SHERRELL INTERVIEW 10 QUESTIONS with BUREAU MAGAZINE





10 QUESTIONS: 

Bureau:  How long have you been creating objects?

CS: I have been creating for as long as I can remember. When I was five, my father gave me a bunch of scrap wood and a hammer and let me build my first chair. The chair took on characteristics of a Gerrit Rietveld classic De Stijl chair and was built to the best of my abilities. It held together with bent nails, hammer dents, and rather rickety but surprisingly strong enough to hold both me and my father. Before that I can't really remember, but I'm sure I was messing around with something in my dad's studio.

Bureau: Your sculpture work is very impressive, do you have any immediate influences?

CS: Too many to list. I am a third generation artist and grew up surrounded by art. I spent the majority of my youth going to museums, galleries, openings, and artists' studios with my father and found that most of everything I saw, I absorbed into my own practices. Most of my work is informed by art history and characteristics of both modern and contemporary art.

Bureau: The work seems to be evolving from a raw aesthetic into a kind of refined ideology, what drives the evolution of your work?

CS: Well I try to just go with the flow of my styles, but I leave my practices open for growth and experimentation into many different mediums, processes and concepts. I don't necessarily like to stick to one or the other so that I can always be thinking about different avenues and approaches to making art. 


Bureau: Much of your work is charged with a pervasive sexuality, how much do personal relationship effect our work as artists?

CS: Depends on the artist. For me, my personal relationships certainly effect avenues of my artwork. My Master's thesis was centered on the idea of unions between two objects and was mainly influenced by the relationship I have with my fiancée Theresa Karnick and my immediate family. The connections between the two objects in each piece in the thesis show hold metaphorical and symbolic significance to my own relationships, but also to anyone and everyone. I feel that as an artist I can look into my own relationships for inspiration because they are what shape my life and my life shapes my art.  


title: Plumb  materials: Birch, Bass wood. 24" x  24" x 72"   2011


Bureau: You have experimented with video, photography and sculpture, do any of these mediums inform each other?

CS: Yeah, although they are completely different mediums, depending on how I use them and in what context I use them, I feel that they can transform into each other or at least take on characters of each other.  For instance, I take photographs of lumber and scale and print them to life size, and mount the photos back onto the original piece of wood.  In some versions I remove the photographed knot hole and expose the real wood knot below. Once the photo is mounted onto the wood, the photograph transforms into that piece of wood and turns into, at least for me, a sculpture and not a photograph. Or in another piece, I projected a video of a braille book onto a blank braille-less book. The viewer went to touch the book and felt nothing, losing the image of the braille under their hands shadow. The video for me transformed into or informed the sculptural aspect of this work. Although the video I made was used traditionally as a projection, the act of using it to imply space and texture, I feel became sculpture and transcended the medium of video.




title: Transporters  materials : Balsa wood, Bass wood / Dimensions Variable 2010 - 2011


Bureau: Did you go to school and what did you pick up along the way ?

CS: I started my studies by attending Joliet Jr. College in Illinois, were my father was my teacher and mentor. I then went on to the New World School of the Arts in Miami, FL where I received my BFA. Immediately upon graduating I pursued my MFA from University of Miami, and as of this weekend have now received it. Along this long journey I have picked up so much I wouldn't even know where to begin. I couldn't narrow down to anything specific without going on and on because they taught me so much. I did find that by working through art schools, I now think that I know what the hell it is I am doing as an artist and what my work is about, in ways. I don't think I'll ever stop picking up things throughout my life as an artist.

Bureau: PLUSH is a lovely object, tell us a little about the process of creating this work from beginning to end.

CS: Well this was a tricky piece to make, and rather interesting that you ask about this piece the way you do, wanting to know from beginning to end. I'll keep it short for you. This piece is the final version of three attempts. The first version gave me tremendous amounts of difficulties and eventually was scrapped and recycled to attempt it again. After getting about 98percent of the way complete with making the second version, an electrician went into my studio and attempted to move it. It resulted in being completely demolished and an insurance claim with their company. After the third attempt I was successful and able to create this plush form. The piece was tricky because it has both and interior view and exterior view and made from ceramic. Its form takes on resemblances of pillows or for me a plush shape and needed to be as smooth and uniform as possible. 

Bureau: How important is experimentation in your work?

CS: Extremely, how else am I going to grow or learn anything?

Bureau: Some of your works are rather obsessive, like the cigarette sculpture. Tells us about following through with your ideas and how that works.

CS: I'm still trying to figure that out. I don't know what makes me choose the pieces or ideas or processes that I want to work with until the time comes. If I have an idea and I can't shake it for a few months I know that I have to look into it a little deeper and make the idea come to life.

Bureau: You have representation on the East Coast at NOW Gallery, where else can we find your work and what are you working on at this time? 

CS: As of right now I am mainly in private collections, in Chicago, LA, New York, and Miami, but currently only showing out of Miami. My next projects involve a series of sculptures based around birdhouses and another series based on child hood objects such as a large scale pacifier, a high high chair, and other children's toys.



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BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE :   INTERVIEWS 


 " I aspired to the artists of my own generation and those from past" 
- James Gabbard   Photographer

" The bookshop, the books within and all of our beloved customers and friends 
have always served as my family." 
- Dennis Wills   Bookstore Owner

" The rawness and the "mistakes" are what make photography unique..." 
-Matt Schwartz  Photographer

" I treated each interview like a masterclass in filmmaking." 
-Tom Donahue   Film Director


" If I have an idea and I can't shake it for a few months, I know that I have to 
look into it a little deeper..."
- Colin Sherrell   Sculptor

"Directing is the most intense and amazing journey that you can go through."
- Diego Luna     Film Director

" For me, photographs are a very unique way of remembering."
- Dennis Morris     Photographer

" I wanted to play in a band where i'm  allowed to express vocally in a variety of  
styles, whether it's rock, punk, blues, cabaret …"
- Timur Bekbosunov    Performer

"  I think that music is the universal language. "  
- Miles  Perlich   Disc  Jockey

" I always try to do projects where I learn stuff as I'm going. "
- Sandow  Birk     Artist  

" Every poem that I write is from something that actually happened."  
-  Sabreen   Shabazz    Poet

" As far as tuning, I think the best way to sum it up is that it's a  manipulation  
  of  intervals.  "                                                              
  - Annie Hayden  Piano Tuner 

" I never get tired of creating.  "                            
  - Jimmy Steinfeldt   Photographer

" What better vehicle for your home sickness in Hollywood  than to write 
  music ? "                                                            
 - Patrick Reiger   Musician

"My dad started running the place in 1978 with a couple partners &  
 eventually ran the place by himself. "                      
 - Michael Torgan     Cinema Owner 

" Were trying to do something thats original and different. " 
 - Bernard Hiller      Acting Coach 

" It's compelling, it's provocative, it's theatrical."
 - Bob Thompson    Theater Producer  

" It was like subverting culture into becoming it's own art form." 
  - Ruby  Ray     Photographer            

" I am motivated to do it because I have had an experience that I 
  have to somehow make visual . "                       
 - Joan Schulze    Artist & Lecturer 

" What can you do to make a difference ? "       
 - Miguel Rivera   Organic Farmer

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: 



AND 

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THE NEW MAY EDITION : 111 pages of Art . Books , Photography . Music and more Free Download



TAP HERE DOWNLOAD THE MAY MAGAZINE NOW 111 PAGES 



Welcome to the Bureau of Arts and Culture's New Monthly Interactive Magazine. We suggest you view the magazine as a two page layout as some articles have a centerfold photographic design. Many of the features are extended on line in audio, simply tap the links & logos to visit and view images related to the Article. We went door to door with a paper edition last year in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, since then we have added sites in New York City, San Francisco, San Diego and Santa Barbara plus the New National Literature site celebrating all things Literary. Last month, we were proud to have BOB MARLEY on The Cover with a featured Interview with Dennis Morris. This month, we have the Legendary Animator & Artist Jules Engel as our Official Guest Illustrator. Jules Engel transformed animation while working for Walt Disney on the ground breaking film: FANTASIA. Also, Exclusive Interviews with Photographers: Andrew Moore, Matt Schwartz and James Gabbard. We also bring you 10 questions with Filmmaker Tom Donahue, Book Store Owner Dennis Wills And Sculptor Colin Sherrell. We invite you backstage with Mark Murphy at REDCAT, Celebrate Miles Davis' 88Th Birthday, give an excerpt from The 'Chapter-A-Day' Novel: " They Call It The City Of Angels ". Plus a 24 Image Essay, Interviews with Tobey C. Moss & Tony Fitzpatrick,  Jack Kerouac's Letters, John Coltrane's Influence at Impulse and Elmer Bernstein's Classic Music for: To Kill A Mockingbird. Tap The Images & Links To Visit Some Of The Institutes. Many of The Ads and Images Are Live Links, so you must be On Line. Send Us an E Mail and You May Win A Complimentary Film From One of Our Advertising Sponsors: FIRST RUN FEATURES. We are also proudly welcoming back INDIE  Printing as an Official Advertising Sponsor for The Coming  Season.        
                                                                                 
A Reminder: Every Ad / Logo is a Live Link so tap & enjoy   - Joshua A. Triliegi  Editor - in - Chief

























NEW FICTION:" They Call It The City of Angels "  Chapter Eleven: Louis Junior / An Excerpt from Part One



The day you get out of the joint, they bring you into a room, and bust out a bag of things that were in your possession the day you got arrested. Fifteen plus years was a long time. He didn't even recognize the things they pulled out of the bag, kids stuff. Some cash, the keys to his car, the key to his Mom's old house, a leather belt with his name inlaid, a pack of smokes, they didn't even make that brand anymore, a wallet with a velcro strap along the top, inside it, a picture of his car, his mom and a school picture I.D. card of Josie. He looked  at the wallet, tossed it back in the bag: F*%#. He walked outside and was waiting for a feeling of relief, some moment of freedom, but nothing happened. He looked at the sky and for the first time in a decade, he felt safe enough to cry, so he did. That was his freedom, the ability to show his feelings and not care who saw him. Junior had built up his armor,  he was untouchable,  nobody could get to him. He had been tested at every level. He'd been betrayed, robbed, beat up, stabbed, lied to, yelled at, locked in the hole, stripped naked, reprimanded, punished and poisoned, but he had passed every test that came his way. 


He learned about loyalty, strength, inner silence, concentration, focus & to some degree, friendship. During the first few years, people entered and left, that was difficult. He later realized that the only people worth getting to know were those who were doing as much time or more, than you were. They'd always be there. You had to bond with someone dependable. Not that you could ever really depend on someone, but, having a connection in the kitchen or laundry or yard helped out. Most of the stuff couldn't even be understood by anyone on the outside. He had become an animal in a human zoo. It took him a couple hours to get use to the fact that no one was watching him, no doors were shutting in front of , and or,  behind him.  It didn't matter what time it was anymore. He  had  lived  a life of clockwork: bells, alarms, shouts and announcements on a p.a. system from the nineteen - thirties. It was now hard to fathom that he could do whatever he pleased.


Louis Junior had not been the first or only member of his family to do time. Many of his Uncles and cousins had done a few years, here and there. But nobody had ever spent more than a decade. The first day in prison, he remembered a story that his Uncle Ray had told him about spending time in prison. "The first guy who even looks at you sideways, or calls you out, no matter what color, no matter how big, no matter how crazy, no matter if he's a prisoner or a guard, no matter what, you have to beat the living shit out of the guy, no matter what."  So, that is what he did. It worked. Everyone left him alone, for a while. He eventually gave his mom permission to sell the car when she needed some money, as long as she promised to send him a few dollars, every now and then. A guy needed things and you had to pay someone sometimes just to get by.                                                     

Years past where he wouldn't even hear from anyone on the outside. Not even his dad, after Juniors Mom had a stroke, things were hard for Louis Senior, when he recovered, they began to write each other regularly and Junior would find that the old man had deposited a few dollars in his account. Which meant he could buy paper, stamps, a candy bar, this type of thing. Junior had been someone who really loved women. He had always loved his Grandmother, his Aunts, his Mom & of course Josie. During his stretch in the joint, it was the worst thing in the world to not spend time with a woman or a girl. All those years deprived of the basic & simple touch of a woman's hand, the sound of her voice, the smell of her clothes. Junior built up a world in his mind that was like a television show or a film or movie that he  could  repeat  over  and  over:  " The Summer of Junior and Josie ". Not unlike one he saw in school during a social studies class, the teacher wheeled out a television and everyone watched a show that had been produced for boston public television, he never forgot it, it was called, "James at 16", where this kid is trying to get through life and he's in love with this girl. One night, unbeknownst, they steal away and spend the night together out in the wild. 

He and Josie had done that, they'd gone swimming, they'd gone to see The Shylites, they'd seen Fernando pitch for the Dodgers, they even went to a freaky punk rock concert at a burnt out church in Hermosa beach one night. So, in his mind, he just relived it all, night after night, day after day, month after month, year after year. It was like a regular show with different episodes, a mix between "Chico and the Man", "The Partridge Family"  and  "James at 16". That was how he survived it all. There were about a dozen or so episodes and he just watched them over and over again. Of course there was that tragic last episode and unfortunately, he was forced to watch that one just as many times as the rest.


The one thing he realized right away was the fact that he had no friends, knew nobody and nobody really knew him. Alone. He had his dad, but that was not very solid. He had his sister and now she had three girls, but, all they had heard of him, was probably tainted. People feared ex-prisoners, mistrusted them,  were  suspicious  and  often  blamed  them  for whatever went wrong in their lives. He  had  heard  a thousand different stories through the years about guys returning home and coming right back due to some family member who dropped a dime because something had gone wrong. A valuable item had been misplaced or any number of things. He promised himself that he would never, ever go back, no way, no how, no, no, no. So as soon as he hit the street, he headed straight over to the outreach where he had been receiving letters from a priest. It took him half the day to get over there by bus and the other half to get back down to the harbor where his Dad, sister and little nieces lived.  The priest had explained that they needed guys like Junior. Everything on the streets of Los Angeles was changing. There had been a truce between several rival gangs and guys like Junior had a place in the church. "All right Father", he had said. " We have work for you, come back and see me tomorrow morning, we have a lot of work to do." The Father gave him five dollars for bus fair home, they shook hands and Junior walked back out into the street, a bit blinded by the light. He'd been living in dark grey hallways and closed quarters for years now, all this sunlight and open sky was new. 


Junior wasn't ready to see his old man and hadn't seen the old neighborhood where they had grown up, so he made it a point to check it out. When he got there, the house was gone, in fact the entire block was gone, it had been razed by the city and nothing at all had been built on it, just a chain link fence. Then he remembered hearing about how the local chemical factory had been polluting the fields directly behind their home and had to pack it in. They bought out anyone who could prove that they or their property had been damaged. Their family  had never even owned the property and by the time his mother found out she had ddt in her blood, a year had passed and it was too late to collect. She had been visiting a sister in Texas when it all went down, never even heard about it until after the fact. "Mom", he said out loud. He stared at the open field and looked up. A red tailed hawk circled overhead several times, it landed on the only tree in the entire field and screeched directly at him several times. 

The bus dropped him off in the harbor well after dark, he had been given the address and knew it was blocks away from where his Mother was buried. His old man had written that he      walked to her grave site daily. When Junior found their house, it was fully lit. A big house out of an old movie. He could see the table set for dinner through the windows & what must have been his niece's bicycles and toys splayed across the front yard. Music could be heard from the house next door and then he saw his sister Celia in a white cotton dress & what must have been her new husband, carrying  food from the kitchen into the living room. The house glowed with a picturesque energy that looked like something he couldn't relate to. It was almost too perfect to the point where, it seemed fake to him. He became scared that maybe he would say the wrong thing. What did he have to talk about ? Junior realized all of this was happening too soon, he wasn't ready for this at all. He walked back down  the  street  toward  the  waterfront and stared at the water for the next few hours.  When it got past midnight, he strolled back up the hill, opened the front gate and found a lawn chair under the tree in the backyard. He didn't really sleep anymore, so he just rested, looked at the stars & wondered what he would do with his life. After all the planning and scheming to stay alive and out of trouble while inside, Junior hadn't had much time to plan what to do when he finally got out. Well, he had his appointment with the Father tomorrow morning, guess he'd just take it one day at a time, as those dudes in the program say. Then, he couldn't help it, just like clockwork, he decided to watch another episode from "The Summer of Junior and Josie". The one where she can't stop laughing at his stupid jokes and they end up asleep in each others arms. When Junior awoke, it was morning, his brother in law handed him a cup of coffee in a big white mug that said, ' Support Your Local Police ', he looked kind of familiar.
.


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BUREAU BOOKS: Jack KEROUAC The Letters of Jack KEROUAC / Readers List: Part One

BUREAU BOOKS: Jack KEROUAC 
The Letters of Jack KEROUAC / Readers List: Part One

When the legend looms larger than the artistic expression, be it, Art, Music, Dance, or in this case Literature, 'Huston, we have a problem', as the saying goes. With Jack Kerouac, and say, Shakespeare this is one of the obstacles. Kerouac was a very real person. Just a guy, a very regular dude, who loved sports, reading the newspapers, cats, girls, America and having some fun. As many people know, he also loved Jazz, Cars, Artists & historical facts. His opus is On The Road. But there is so much more in the canon. For beginners it is always safe to start at the beginning with The Town and The City.  There are also great everyday musings in The Selected Letters Volume One and Two. 

These are actually my favorites because The LETTERS document the highs and lows, the everyday hustle and bustle, the championships and the defeats, the fights among outsiders and his brawls and fallouts with many of his pals such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder,  Carl Soloman,  Malcolm Cowley, John Clellon Holmes, Phillip Whalen, Peter Orlovsky and of course his extremely important relationship with Neil Cassady and Cassidy's extended families. Edited by Ann Charters at Penguin Books. Also by Ann Charters is The Portable Beat Reader on Penguin &The Portable Jack Kerouac. Both are fine reading and good gifts for someone curious about beats. We were so impressed with these letters, obsessed really, that it led to creating two  feature films with thirty different directors each interpreting their own take on the Letters of artistic individuals. LETTERS of The Underground Volume One in 2002, Volume Two in 2007. Both film projects were created in connection with a non profit film festival's experimental director's program.

Letters are such an intimate and wonderful lost art. Many people have no idea how important the letter is and has been for writers.  John  Steinbeck  wrote  a  daily letter to his Agent and or Publisher as a warmer - upper, describing the chapters he was working on for East of Eden. When he felt that the oven of creativity was preheated, he tossed in a clean sheet of paper and began the arduous work of creating the work of that day.  The letter is often the work out / stretching session prior to the run. 

In the case of Jack Kerouac, it is also a chance to realize how messy & challenging life as an artist can be. Many of his letters to Sterling Lord, his agent, are very helpful for those intending to learn about how things were, back in the day. We also suggest, Good Blonde & Others on Grey Fox press. Its got some very basic, everyday musings that will surprise even the more conservative readers. Lots of nuggets on writers, essays to newspapers, observations, essays on writing, on sports, on the Beats and On The Road.  The book is edited by Donald  Allen  with  an  Introduction  by  Robert  Creeley. 

Also out, more recently, is the Original Scroll of Kerouac's pinnacle, On The Road on Viking Press . We picked up a copy recently and plan diving into it soon. It is an unedited first draft of the opus work. The inside jacket sleeve explains that this new unedited version is, ' … rougher, wilder and more sexually explicit than the published version. Oh my, It looks to be a very interesting Spring.  


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