Subject: how to interview
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sun Feb 06 2000 - 04:17:50 EST
There are, of course, interviews & interviews
I presume one's approach to a first time novelist would
be a little different from the attempt to unveil Bill Clinton.
And I doubt Lucy could have been given better or more
professional advice for her own forthcoming encounter.
But almost anyone prominent enough to be interviewed
more than once or twice acquires, instinctively, a technique
for controlling the situation to his own advantage - a dominance
often already established to some extent by the relative prestige
of 'star' & interviewer.
An awful lot of interviews - both 'live' & on paper - develop
into little more than cosy fan-&-idol book plugs or political
party spinnings. The mutual strokings are justified as the most
effective way of gentling out the truth. But what they more
often produce are catcalls & mock vomitings from the imprisoned
audience. All too often one is left with the suspicion of the two
parties retiring afterwards to the green room or nearest pub for
a short session of mutual congratulation at having put yet another
one over on a gullible public.
(There is, thank God, nothing paranoid about ME.)
The ones I enjoy & find most illuminating are - believe it or not -
the ones spiced with abrasiveness. Nothing quite so hilarious as
the moment when the chap stands up, pulls the microphone from
his lapel & stalks out. Nothing so hilarious - or so revealing.
It always seemed to me that Jeremy Paxman (BBC Television's
Numero Uno political interviewer) gave the best advice to intending
interviewers.
'Always ask yourself,' he said: 'Why is this lying bastard trying to
tell
me yet more lies?'
Scottie B.
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