The Friedkin Connection—A Memoir

By William Friedkin. (HarperCollins, 2013)

The title of William Friedkin’s memoir alludes to the fact that he directed the action film classic The French Connection, with its revolutionary car-chase sequence. A tagline on the book’s cover mentions that more explicitly, and adds that he’s also the “legendary director” of The Exorcist.

But this is a book for theater enthusiasts as well. Perhaps primarily for them, since the collaborative relationship which Friedkin prizes most, the one which is woven most strongly through the narrative, was with Harold Pinter.

Friedkin has done many noteworthy movie-movies. Many are crime thrillers, from the comical The Brink’s Job and Deal of the Century to the controversial gay-nightclub serial-killer mystery Cruising to the underrated Sorcerer. But there’s a consistent line of theatrical adaptations on his resume, starting with his surehanded adaptation of Pinter’s The Birthday Party in 1968. That the risk-averse Pinter took a chance on a largely untested young director for the film version of one of his breakthrough works is a compliment which Friedkin does not take lightly. He describes making The Birthday Party (which starred the great stage actor Robert Shaw, often typecast as heavies in films like those which Friedkin would later make) with much greater detail than he allows for either The Exorcist or The French Connection. He always continually returns to Pinter, as a friend and as an influence, throughout the book. It’s more compelling in some ways than Julian Sands’ full-length one-man show about his own connections to Pinter.

The Pinter content is bracing enough: “From a creative standpoint,” Friedkin writes, “the year I spent with Pinter on the screen adaptation of his first play was an awakening and a life-changing lesson in the art of creating serious, suspenseful drama.

Another stage-derived Friedkin film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s, was released the same year as The Birthday Party. A famous flop which nonetheless has many bright moments and a stage-happy cast headed by Jason Robards, Bert Lahr and British music hall veteran Norman Wisdom. Minsky’s mythologizes the waning days of the American vaudeville tradition. Friedkin’s forthcoming about that project’s failures: “There were many problems with it, but the biggest was my own ineptitude. I had researched the period but I didn’t know how to convey the right tone.” He even at one point asked the film’s co-producer Norman Lear to fire him.

Friedkin’s next film after The Night They Raided Minsky’s, and his last before he hit the bigtime, and won an Oscar, for The French Connection was The Boys in the Band. Friedkin gives some useful background to how he came to be involved with this respectful stage-to-screen translation of Mart Crowley’s seminal gay social drama The Boys in the Band. At the same time, the director is clear about how he came late to the party, following the play’s extraordinary success Off Broadway. Crowley, Friedkin says, “was overwhelmed by the play’s success, having known mostly failure in his creative endeavors up to then. Mart insisted we use the play’s original cast, to which I agreed. They had come to embody their roles and worked well as an ensemble. We also agreed we’d have to achieve a realistic tone, and it would of course be an entirely new staging. He had ideas for opening up the film with a visual prologue in a handful of New York locations, but it needed the claustrophobia of a one-room set to retain its impact. The trick was to keep the film claustrophobic but cinematic.

Just as he notes that an exchange in The French Connection is reminiscent of the interrogation scene in The Birthday Party, Friedkin links shooting The Boys in the Band back to what he learned lensing Pinter’s play. “The Birthday Party had sharpened my sense of how to capture a scene without allowing the camera to be intrusive.” Friedkin insisted that the actors rehearse for a couple of weeks prior to filming, which they at first resisted because they had already been performing the play for so long. The result? “Today, it’s generally regarded as a landmark film. I say this in all modesty because I believe its power lies in Mart’s script and the brilliant performances by the entire cast, which went virtually unrecognized at the time.” (A fuller appreciation of The Boys in the Band can be found in Crayton Robey’s smart 2011 documentary Making the Boys.

Friedkin is still out there making movies, and still working with accomplished stage dramatists. His two most recent films, Bug and Killer Joe, both came from plays written by Tracy Letts. A whole chapter of his memoir is devoted to the Letts films, very much in the present tense of Friedkin’s illustrious career.

Oh, and somewhere along the line Friedkin, who came to filmmaking not from a theater background but from non-fiction documentaries, started directing operas. The Friedkin Connection stands out among film-director memoirs due to its self-deprecating tilt, its prizing of strong collaborative relationships and loyal friendships rather than personal accomplishments, and its willingness to travel outside its filmmaking field to pay tribute to other media. Mainly theater. Nice connections.

The third 500-page volume in a trilogy which takes the characters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest a lot more seriously than Shakespeare ever did. Lamplighter has grown a whole mythology around Miranda and her siblings. Siblings? Yes, Prospero’s been busy—or just bored since he’s apparently immortal. Several of his offspring, however, have been swept away by Hellwinds. The family business, Prospero Inc., has problems you can’t itemize on any spreadsheet.

I find books such as this, which turn allegories and metaphors into role-playing game manuals, a tough slog, even when I care about the characters. My own philosophy of life doesn’t allow for so many absolute rules of existence. Some of the principles in this Prospero series can’t set a foot wrong without literally raising the devil.

“Is there really a connection between our little Eridanus and the Milky Way?”
“According to the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, the similarity of the name would be enough to make a connection for a spirit being.”

First, as someone once said, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Each son or daughter of Prospero a special staff, each with its own special power: Winds, Summoning, Devastation, Decay, Persuasion…

Caliban’s on hand for a few chapters of this sprawling saga, but isn’t particularly funny, more of a tragic pawn. That’s a directorial choice, of course. The humor comes from sibling rivalry, from ancient spiritual cultures clashing with contemporary corporate civilizations and the endless banter among the enchanted.

Prospero Regained is fanciful and full-bodied, but too finicky for my taste. Shakespeare had the right idea in confining his magical goings-on to one small island.

This is a dumb, lightweight book in which whimsical old Shirley shares things she’s gotten over. And some things she hasn’t. Duly noted, the chapter heading on page 199 reads:
I Will Never Get Over the Thrill of Live Performing.
MacLaine rhapsodizes over how “there is no other life when you are performing live,” how “the miraculous magic of self-expression and the appreciation the audience feels overrides everything,” how you “become one with the audience, one with the music, the lights and the collective spirit of the audience. They send you energy. You send it back.” How, “Yes, it is better than sex. It is being One with all there is.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Shirley MacLaine hasn’t appeared onstage in a Broadway show for over 28 years.

Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly and Other New Adventures of the Great Detective

By Donald Thomas (Pegasus Books, New York). Thomas is such an accomplished hand at writing Sherlock Holmes yarns that he overwrites and overindulgesd, lulling you into complete credulity. When he writes at length about a late-19^th century actor-manager named Caradoc Price, he provides such extensive tangential detail that I had to stop reading to go Google the character and see if he actually existed. Thomas is exceeding good at scene-setting. A whole chunk of this new collection of his original Holmes novellas and short stories bears the title “Sherlock Holmes the Actor,” and Thomas not only provides a ripping adventure set in the Victorian theater realm but a 12-page introduction to that story labeled “A Fragment of Biography” which elaborates on Sherlock Holmes’ brief career as a professional actor before he began dabbling in crime detection. He (or rather the usual narrative presence of Dr. John H. Watson) describes roles Holmes played and posits that, based just on the costumed improvisations he developed in his detective work, “he would have encountered little competition on the London stage—except perhaps from Irving and possibly from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. But that was all.”

It doesn’t have the sheer theatrical splendor of an earlier Sherlock Holmes pastiche, Nicholas Meyer’s The West End Horror, but Thomas adds a scholarly severity which is hard to shake.

Backstage Stuff—A Jane Wheel Mystery

By Sharon Fiffer (Minotaur Books, 2011)

She hates the script, but private investigator and antiques enthusiast Jane Wheel goes to work on a community theater production of a newly discovered—and clearly cursed—old melodrama. One reason she takes the gig—she gets a $500 stipend to design the show and run props. In community theater, that’s big money!

The contrivances continue beyond the concept of money as a motivation to do community shows with friends. For an ostensibly light read, there’s an awful lot of explaining and agonizing over the most bizarre theories.

Nellie now backed away from the rinse tanks, wiping her hands on her apron. “Lowry’s got you working on the Kendell house while he’s doing that silly play then? That’s okay. You probably got the better job. That theater thing…

Nellie pronounced theater the-a-t0r—long e, long a, long o, and with as much disgust as she could muster.

Antiques Knock-Off—A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Mystery

By Barbara Allan (Kensington Books, 2011)

Barbara Allan is the joint pseudonym of married writers Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins. Both are accomplished novelists in their own right who seem to have special fun writing together. Their 2005 Cold War thriller Bombshell is a pop culture bonanza. The Collinses throw themselves into the Barbara Allan series with even more glee, merrily interrupting the story with recipes and antiquing tips. The series is hysterically entertaining, and the mystery elements don’t bog down.

The community theater references here are a recurring feature, courtesy of central character Vivian, drama-queen mother of her partner in crimesolving Brandy. While Brandy is the steadier presence, Vivian often gets ahold of the narrative voice herself:

Brandy looked appalled. “Happy? How can you be happy? You’re in prison, Mother!”

All my years of preaching to be a “do bee,” not a “don’t bee, had never quite stuck with the girl.

I said patiently, “It’s not prison, it’s jail, darling.And I’m happy because there’s so much I can accomplish ‘on the inside.’”

“Like what?”

“Like starting a theater club among the women. We’ll perform one-acts to begin with, then, eventually, complete three-act plays. And, who knows, maybe one day we’ll be ready to tackle the Bard of Avon himself! ‘Once more into the breach, dear friends!’… Dear, a gaping mouth is not an attractive look at any age.”

“You can’t be serious…”

“When am I ever not serious, dear? Why, we could take our production on the road, performing at other prisons—state-wide at first—Anamosa, Fort Dodge, Newton.” I raised a finger to make my point. “But then comes the big-time,. Folsom, Leavenworth, San Quentin—and the Broadway of prisons…Sing Sing!” I frowned. “Too bad Alcatraz is closed—how I would have loved to play there!”

Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime

By Michael Spradlin. Illustrated by Jeff Weigel.

Something inside me died when I read/sang my way through this latest literary exploitation of the undead.

It’s strictly a songbook, line-for-line rewrites in which loving and romancing is replaced with biting and eating.

That doesn’t bother me. The humor may not be delectable, but it’s not indigestible. An average/mediocre exercise in song parodies.

But the death I notice in the strained verses of Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime are not the rotting renanimated corpses poised to sink their teeth into singing. My stomach turned instead at the songs these undead had chosen to sing.

This book, for me, signals the utter demise of showtunes, as distinct from pop songs, as vehicles for satire.

Showtunes are ideal vehicles for song parodies. They’re written for strong, well-though-out characters and tend to have lots of pronouns in them. When you parody a showtune, you have extra tools available.

When you parody a pop song, on the other hand, you’re working with words that tend to be simple and direct to the point of meaninglessness. Often they’re barely essential to the song, as they’re often overwhelmed by the vocal, instrumental or production style.

This isn’t snobbery. Those are the requirements of the different genres. Hooks and catchiness are primary to pop tunes but secondary to showtunes. Likewise, showtunes have to worry about integrating themselves into a grander plot and score, and pop songs don’t.

But Broadway songs aren’t synonymous with pop songs anymore. They’re not nearly as pop, or as popular. Not enough people will get the parodies. This was an uphill struggle even for Forbidden Broadway, which served a cult audience of Broadway fanatics and had trouble touring out of town with the results.

It was MAD magazine that fought the good fight for song parodies, half a century ago. Sued by music publishers for running parody lyrics with suggestions that they be “sung to the tune of…” copyrighted melodies, MAD went to court and won a landmark freedom-of-speech decision. But even MAD doesn’t bother with song parodies anymore. Too limiting, one imagines.

So Broadway gets more and more precious and acquired-tasteful, until even zombies don’t want to sink their teeth into it.

The Leftovers (Audiobook edition, read by Dennis Boutsikaris, MacMillan Audio, 2011).

Given his awards, acclaim and experience, getting Dennis Boutsakiris to perform the audiobook version of your novel must be like getting Pacino or DeNiro to star in the movie version. Boutsakiris has a string of impressive acting credits, including several awards for the recent film Calling It Quits, an Obie for the 1992 Off Broadway production of Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen, and appearances on TV drama series going back as far as 1980. But on his own website and elsewhere, it’s his audiobook work that dominates. He’s done over 90 of the things, entrusted with fiction from John Grisham to Philip Roth to Neil Gaiman and non-fiction from Game Change to The Smartest Guys in the Room to Slavery By Another Name.

In my fuller review of The Leftovers over at my other blog, www.scribblers.us, I note the similarities between Perrotta’s latest novel, with its atypically large cast and wondrously inexplicable supernatural set-up, and the work of Stephen King. Well, Boutsakiris won awards for his new recording of the King classic Firestarter.

No word yet on the casting for the announced HBO miniseries version of Tom Perrotta’s new book The Leftovers, but Dennis Boutsakiris is indeed the voice of the eight-CD audiobook version. As you may suspect from the range of lit he gets to tackle vocally, Boutsakiris’ talent is not in overplaying the material but in providing a measured, even tone that lets you interpret the book your own way. It’s a natural match for a writer like Perrotta, who isn’t flashy or sensational even when dealing with massive global calamities, newly minted saviors and serial killings. There’s an internalized filtering of horrors that makes his work so palatable, and Boutsakiris’ matter-of-fact tone captures that.

But Boutsakiris is also able to easily and subtly present the manifold differences in manner, background and social adeptness among Perrotta’s many Leftovers characters. He doesn’t put on accents, or overplay gender differences, yet is able to keep the voices distinct. That’s an audiobookreading talent which is highly sought—even but not flat, steady but not boring–and ideal for the equally unjumpy approach of Perrotta’s prose.

Here’s a sample of Dennis Boutsakiris reading Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, courtesy of MacMillan Audio:

Leftovers

So we checked in under names like the Shakespearean Players, Upchuck and the Hurlers, or, my favorite, Six Legs and Four Balls (I stole that one from Peter, Paul and Mary). We’d arrive at the Holiday Inn and they’d say “Welcome, Shakespearean Players!” We would say stuff like ‘Thank thee, sire” and “Will thou showest us-eth to our roometh?” (Try saying that with crackers in your mouth.) It was out there, but you know, at four in the morning, anything goes.

—Steven Tyler, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?—A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2011)

Comic Tragedies was copywritten 1893 by Anna B. Pratt but the title page says “Written by ‘Jo’ and ‘Meg’ and acted by the ‘Little Women’.” A foreword by Meg (not in quotes this time) and dated “Concord, Mass. 1893” reminds the reader of how, in Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, the sisters would write and stage plays for their own amusement, then explains:
From the little stage library, still extant, the following plays have been selected as fair examples of the work of these children of sixteen and seventeen. With some slight changes and omissions they remain as written more than forty years ago by Meg and Jo, so dear to the hearts of many other “Little Women.”
We then are presented with complete, multi-act scripts for:
Norna; or The Witch’s Curse
The Captive of Castile; or, The Moorish Maiden’s Vow
The Greek Slave
Ion
Bianca: An Operatic Tragedy
The Unloved Wife; or, Woman’s Faith

I had a copy out for months from the invaluable Institute Library, a private lending library here in New Haven. Nabu Press issued a glossy covered paperback last year for $24.20. But Comic Tragedies is also easily available on Project Gutenberg and other book-archive sites. It has even been recorded for LibraVox.

Scholarly commentary on the book is relatively scarce, considering the scads of theses that have been written about Little Women. Is Comic Tragedies a literary fabrication or as advertised, the actual works that inspired one of the imaginative highlights of Alcott’s famous novel?

Christine Anne Alexander and Juliet McMaster, in The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf appear to have the straight dope:

In 893, Anna Alcott Pratt published some of these amateur dramatics… Here, with editorial changes, were the real prototypes of the dramatics portrayed in Little Women. Unfortunately, Louisa’s part in composing these juvenilia cannot be accurately determined, since Anna, as a teenager, wrote too.

Lit scholars can pick apart the verbiage to declare which words might be Louisa. Little thespians will just enjoy performing them:

RIENZI: ‘Tis a wild and lonely spot, and ‘t is said strange spirits have been seen to wander here. Why come they not? ‘T is past the hour, and I who stand undaunted when the fiercest battle rages round me, now tremble with strange fear in this dim spot. Shame on thee, Rienziu, there is nought to fear.
[Opens a scroll and reads.]
Here are their names, all pledged to see the deed accomplished. ‘T is a goodly list and Constantine must fall when foes like these are round him.
[Ione appears within the glen.]
Ha! Methought I heard a sound! Nay, ‘t was my foolish fancy. Spirits, I defy thee!
IONE: Beware! Beware!
—From The Greek Slave