Subject: Re: Interview
From: Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Date: Sat Feb 05 2000 - 21:07:32 EST
What I loved about your list, Will, was it's beautiful logic.... Tape
recorder... Notes.... Questions.... go with the flow.... Know what you're
talking about.... I ESPECIALLY loved the "refreshment" section, which made
me momentarily think that I was reading some memo from Buddy about the best
way for a member of the 5th estate to deal with the real world.... (Cynics
would call it "checkbook journalism".... But a well-placed bottle of
Lagavulin has got me a long way in this world.... Ahem.... We'd best not
walk any further down that road....)
I'm flattered that you seemed to somehow enjoy being interviewed by me....
To tell you the honest truth, I don't think of myself as much of an
interviewer. I make documentaries. (Right now, I'm procrastinating in the
face of an unimaginable deadline for a three-hour documentary about RENE
DESCARTES....) When I'm doing an interview that will ultimately appear in a
documentary, I use a completely different rule-book from when I'm doing
other kinds of interviews.... My aim is to get the interviewee to say
whatever it is that they know needs to be said.... There's nothing
subversive here. I'm not trying to make anybody make a fool of
themselves.... Quite (oops!) the opposite.... The only reason for doing an
interview is to find out what the interviewee has to say.
Interviews like that ought to be fun--for both the interviewer and the
interviewee. At best, it ought to become a real conversation.... Two minds
making contact. When these sorts of conversations are recorded (for radio,
in my case.... for more academic purposes in the case of Lucy-Ruth) the
result is almost inevitably powerful.
Have I told you yet how much I love my job?
Interviews conducted for future use in a documentary (my favorite form, and
the one for which you, Will, and Tim, and Camille, and Rick, and others were
"interviewed") aren't really interviews at all. They're playful....
Friendly.... Informative.... sometimes even enlightening.... But they're
very different from other sorts of "interviews" I've had to conduct down
through the years....
And there are different rules for each....
I've got some specific suggestions, though, for Lucy-Ruth.... Don't spend
too much time on mechanical questions about how he got published--even
though I know that's what lots of young writers might be interesting in
learning. Unless he's truly shallow, those sorts of questions will bore him
stiff. Treat him like a writer, rather than a businessman. Aim all your
questions towards the ultimate: Why? ....and you're sure to get some
interesting answers along the way.
Recently, I've been thinking about some of the "best" interviews I've been
priviledged to be a part of.... (Fumbling for his Strunk & White, to see
whether it might now be marginally acceptable to end a sentence with a
preposition....)
Many of them were 'accidents', set up for some stupid purpose that had
nothing to do with their ultimate value..... Will Durant.... Allen
Ginsburg.... Yehudi Menuhin.... Dwight Macdonald.... V. S. Pritchett....
Julian Barnes.... Alfred A. Knopf.... the guy who really wrote "The Music
Man".... John Cage.... Julia Child.... Jimmy Breslin.... Uta Hagen.... Han
Suyin.... Ry Cooder.... Others were more 'intentional', but still with
suprising twists.... Saul Bellow.... Martin Amis.... Noam Chomsky.... Eugene
McCarthy.... Northrup Frye....
The previous paragraph contains a list of "famous" people.... Most of the
TRULY best interviews I've conducted have been with just people....
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