Illustrated Daily; 6001; Illustrated Daily #6001 & 6002

You in the word Hollywood has this great connotation of lack of seriousness too much money and all this kind of garbage it take a look at films that have been made in the career you know in the 20th century I mean film is every bit as important an art

or a medium an ecstatic experience is right novels or poetry of dancing or the theater whatever right the illustrated daily managing editor how roads hello there is no other way to put it John Nichols has all of the makings of a paradox perceived by his admirers and his critics as alternately complex and incredibly simple body yet perfectly mannered passionate but shy a high bound left -winger some accused of being a closet capitalist all of which conceivably could be true certainly one thing is clear at the age of 45 John Nichols for years now a fixture in towels is one of

America's major literary figures and he has been since 1965 when at the age of 24 his first published novel the sterile cuckoo rolled off the presses and made him an instant celebrity yet Nichols literary career has had more than its share of disappointments I work real hard from a real hard worker you know I got to rewrite things 10 or 15 times before I finally figure out whether they're working or not I've written about 30 35 novels I've only published eight books right over the years most of the books that I haven't published are just terrible books right I mean they would they smell be that as it may John Nichols is today as happy and productive as he has been in years just a week before we visited him at his tallest home he married the beautiful one eat a wool it was Nichols second married and the couple shows all of the signs of giddy newly wed professionally three years ago the script on which Nichols work for the

coast agar rice film missing starring jack lemon and sissy spasic won the Academy Award and just days ago John sent his publisher a major piece of nonfiction on the mesa the mace's therapy I've come to cherish the inconspicuous horned locks their eternal presence through all seasons everything seems very soft disconcertingly fragile even when icy winds are blowing driving cold splinters of air into my cheeks causing tears that blur my vision the mesa feels gentle bones just lie there forever it's almost as pretty as a snowflake I am granted such personal autonomy out here picked clean things sing in the tempest rock's almost never budge ordinary beetles stand out as tiny marvels of clumsy locomotion coyote tracks suggest the presence of a cool dispassion at hunter

it's a triumph of nature's imagination radiance in every sagebrush plant and stock of gramma grass polished black rocks emit an ebony glow suggesting that just for now they're lighter than air you could just slip a hawk's feather into burnished basalt contours and tickle their blind iron hearts they tremble at their sandy moorings almost able like ensuesian spaceships to hover inches above the earth tickled pink by the sudden freedom while the rocks are levitating I suppose coyotes will pad among the floating boulders in no way intimidated by the mysterious display of weightlessness hunting for grubs and drowsy snakes in the recently vacated depressions then the last flare -up of crepuscular alchemy dies away rock settle back to earth with nary a bump only then do I notice the towers lights twinkling merrily whatever happened to that belligerent storm cloud for another celebrated new Mexico

literary figure Rudolfo Anaya Nichols is pure magic John Nichols has a a racy style slap dash very often moves fast has a lot of characters so you style again is one of his strengths and that's been put in the camp of magical realism that that's an honor to be in that camp because that's what's coming out of Latin America and that's what the the world is reading today so his biggest problem I think in the beginning has to do with being an insider outsider he's right right or the came from outside the state outside the Hispanic culture and wrote about the Hispanic culture especially in the Milagro bean field war immediate lot a lot of people took notice and said whoa you know can a writer who comes from outside from the

east write about us the insiders we're not out to exclude anyone from our culture we're not an exclusionist culture his work is like and admired to the point that Chicano critics looking at literature make room within Chicano literature for those people from the outside a non Chicano writer who writes about the culture and they call it literatura Chicanesca a lot of non Hispanic writers make the mistake of being afraid and so then that fear begins to affect the work that's where you get I think bad caricatures a bad history bad knowledge of the culture and John Nichols is I think is a very open person a very open writer he says if I'm not afraid of him because I've lived with these people and I'm going to create

fiction we have to remember again that he's not writing history and he's not writing sociology he's writing fiction well be a fiction or nonfiction realism or magic serious politics or delicious humor John Nichols makes very good company you know you scared the wits out of me the other day when reportedly you said you're going to go out and get a three -piece Pierre Cardin suit to wear for this occasion I'm so glad you didn't well we tried right but it's still at the cleaner they could get it down time I was reading an autobiographical sketch which included a picture of John Nichols of the age of 181958 with Linda boys I believe at the linda at the lumus prep prom Lord you were squeaky clean those days um yeah that's right how great the distance between here and there

actually I wasn't all that squeaky clean when I was at lumus I got a lot of trouble all the time for wearing my I'm in fact I spent the first two years in detention when I was going to prep school I had a real chip in my shoulder and I was getting trouble I was getting fights that kind of thing uh linda boys I remember was a high school girl you know I went out with high school girls because I didn't want to hang out in the whole prep school kind of crowd I went for example when I was going to high school we moved around a lot when I was growing up and I went to high school and I was going to the first year of high school in her in in Virginia and I was getting straight A's and in particular everybody loved me because I wrote poems and short stories and stuff like that and I would get A++++ whenever I handed in some kind of story to my teacher in in her in in Virginia and then I went to lumus the next year and I handed in my first short story or my first theme or something like that and um it came back so covered with red pencil that I couldn't even read it and in fact my English was so

ungrammatical and so bad that they put me in a remedial English course to teach me how to read and write when I got to lumus right and ever after that I always had real difficulty in English and everyone I got to college I went to Hamilton College and upstate New York and the only major course that I almost flunked was freshman English because I got something like a 30 on the final exam did you know something they didn't or did they know something you didn't they knew I was real illiterate that I was real illiterate when did you know you had the ear at what point in your life did you know you had the ear that you were hearing things that were worth recording I didn't I grew up in a family my daddy played the guitar and was a linguist I um I always like languages I mean I loved goofing off with languages my dad was I was speaking languages he speaks Russian and French and some Chinese I'm half French so my mother was French right when I learned to talk I learned to talk in French

when I went you know going back to lumus I remember when I got to lumus I took French naturally because I want to learn how to speak French right and I remember the first semester was just talking right no books no grammar no nothing like that and I got an A because all it was you know Bonjour comment allez vous et monsieur Jean -U guineux je suis là bas and all that kind of stuff right and I had a perfect accent did everything just really great the next year I go into second year French it's all grammar it's all reading it's no talking at all right even the professor hardly talks in class I flunked it I had to repeat French I mean I speak I finally went to Europe in 1960 I spent summer my grandmother is French from Brittany but she I'm spent she was married in a ranged marriage when she was 16 to a guy who was representative for standard oil in Barcelona Spain right and so she spent from age 16 to 89 in Barcelona and so I go over to Barcelona Spain and

when I got out of college to spend a year living there in the house and learn French in about three months that's all it took just speaking French you've been a celebrity since you were what 24 celebrity well you think I'm a celebrity why don't you no I don't think so I don't know when I was 24 whatever that book came out and it made a little splash and it was kind of fun and it was made into a film and people pushed it right I remember I used to go read the New York Times and there be little ads with my little picture and all that kind of stuff and that lasted about six months my second book came out and just dive bomb you know felt like a rock into the bottom of the ocean it was called a Wizard of Loneliness it went nowhere and then for the next eight years I wrote about ten novels and yeah but none of them got published and by 1970 nobody had ever heard of you know John Nichols I wasn't making any money I was broke I remember 1970 I earned

$240 for the Japanese translation right so the sterile cuckoo that was it right and then it's like you got an albatross around your neck to sterile cuckoo right everybody says oh yeah you wrote the sterile cuckoo you know I wrote the sterile cuckoo in the Paleozoic age no no serious right yeah grow that kind of stuff you just go beyond it and you could have stayed you could stayed on the east coast in places like New York City after sterile cuckoo you could have become a media celebrity you were young you were handsome you are ticker you were handsome enough and you were you were relatively articulate you're going too far John and you could have done you could have done the whole Gorvidon normal mayor thing gone on talk I don't think I had the brains for that you don't think you had to be really smart for that I don't think I have that quick of

mind I mean I got out of that kind of literary scene mostly for political reasons I published the sterile cuckoo in what 1965 right that's also the first year I started getting really involved in Vietnam and the more the deeper that I got into Vietnam I went went into a kind of what do you call culture shock a lot of people in my generation did that right and the more politically involved I became the more god I don't know the whole literary scene seemed real fatuous right seemed very precious I started trying to write books that were very political and I had no skill at it whatsoever I had no training in it no skill at it I mean I wanted to write novels after a while that would end the Vietnam war right most of the books I wrote were real angry real nasty books real anti -American

books and I probably went to four literary parties in my life right remember going up to at George Plimpton's house you know the whole Paris review crowd now that whole kind of thing and go into parties and meet and people like Ralph Ellison and Muriel Sparck and Philip Roth and all that kind of stuff and people tout you right this could be the bright new literary talent and you were that's why you were advertising and oh yeah oh yeah and they carry you along right and then they drop you in a garbage can hey when you're out live your bright you know yeah I'm talent your lawyer no I'll have a lawyer you don't need lawyers I don't sue anybody right you get sued huh never been sued uh -uh the only the last time somebody threatened to sue me it was Chan Ramming right oh yeah he threatened to sue me I was I was writing articles for the new mexico review right why he threatened to sue you the job and of course this governor uh -uh as aid who recently recently was indicted for one yeah he threatened to sue me for using I believe it was using the word shenanigans to describe his activities with his law firm right and then the

suit got dropped because he he was put in jail I believe for embezzling a large sum of money from his law firm you actually you actually what ended up in new mexico rather shortly after Martin Luther King was assassinated I left New York City I guess the day before Martin Luther King Martin Luther King was assassinated right in 68 got out to Colorado Springs rented a VW Beetle and started driving around I was so freaked out by what was happening in the country as a result of Martin Luther King's assassination that I covered about 5 ,000 miles in five days it was just crazy right I mean I just drove from Colorado Springs down through tals all the way down through Lord'sburg to Douglas and then back up through Arizona you know I went to Fort Carlos you know the San Carlos Apache reservations and stuff like that went all the way up into Navajo Country went through the Navajo Country at Las Vegas Las Vegas Nevada and you know spent some time there went up through Utah and came back to Colorado Springs and just got on a bus and went back to New York City never saw

anything never finished the book I mean I was just so so flipped out by those were hard times those 1968 was the hardest year of my life I remember you know it's real sad so then how actually did you out of all that end up in Thompson Mexico okay we were living in New York City Ruby my my ex wife and I were living in New York had a kid Luke we were living a little tiny apartment on E 7th Street didn't have any money right we were broke and I had no place to write if I wanted to shut a door in the house to write I had to go in the bathroom because I was the only door and I was just a little half -fourth through and I was writing in the donut shop in the corner or in the NYU study carols right I was trying to write books in the study hall at NYU and I'd sneak into the typing room right and I didn't have a student card right so I have to go in illegally and I go in illegally to try and use the type writers but I was so nervous about getting caught right that it was real hard to type so we

wanted to get out of New York but we were doing a lot of political work and I didn't want to stop the political work and I read a lot about New Mexico I was reading a magazine that came out of Espanola called El Grito del Norte that was put out by a woman named Elizabeth Martinez yeah and I read that a lot I read a lot about New Mexico and so finally we made a decision to come out here because it seemed like there were a lot of opportunities to do the kind of political work that we've been doing in New York City i .e. that was Ray Histiadina in the land grant movement and that was a time of a whole lot of political vegetation in New Mexico so we knew a few friends right they talked about that a lot and that's why we came to New Mexico also came to New Mexico because it seemed a lot like New York that might sound real funny but there's a real message a lot listen to a lot of people watching this show that sounds very funny and you're gonna explain it okay New Mexico is basically a lot of New Mexico particularly in the north it's a very beautiful

rural ghetto you know people are really poor people here just as poor as they are in New York City right I mean you walk through northern New Mexico it's like walking through starberry mansion in Philadelphia bedford stivocent in Brooklyn or South Chicago or Cleveland right just looks beautiful so people don't notice how hard the life is right or how much needs to be done right I want to talk about missing I don't think a yeah right this is the screenplay it got the Oscar that year for what best best adapted screenplay yeah got for you didn't get the Oscar and how come no I was arbitrated out of a credit by the writer's guild I read that but I don't know what that means the writer's guild has a policy that if a script comes in with more than two credits they hold in arbitration to make sure that the third of the fourth credit are deserved to

be on the picture but that's real variable because sometimes a person can come in and do just a minor amount of work which changes totally the nature of film and makes it work right there are famous cases of people who have saved films are actually you know right done the most important part of a film we never got credit Bonnie and Clyde is one I forget the guy who finally really brought that together Tutsi's another Oscar and not she worked with one of I I think we both agree one of the world's greatest directors Costa Godras did Z which in my opinion is one of the finest films ever made state of siege uh -huh missing your film was you know this is a question of you know of a fan what was Costa Godras like I just got a phone call out of the blue right you want to come out to California talk with Costa Godras about working on a film what am I gonna say no right and so

I got a train I go out to Los Angeles they hand me a script a limousine he's me at the train station right nobody ever met me in a limousine unslouched in the back of limousine in case anybody political friend see me right yeah reading this script driving off to this hotel I get to the hotel I spend another half hour reading the script and then they tell me call Costa Godras he's in the same hotel I call him up you know I say I finished reading the script he says bone he says gum down John right okay and I go downstairs to his room I go in the room and I sit down and he says well what you think right and I realize I'm talking to a guy can hardly speak English right I mean he's sitting there you know with these cut little sentences and stuff like that we start trying to communicate about this script and I don't know nothing about script writing so I figured the only thing to do is just be real straight right so we talk for about 10 minutes and finally he's searching for a word right

and I give him the word in French because I speak French okay and he says he says super français and I say right so for the rest of the time when I'm working on missing he's talking to me in French all the time and I'm talking back to me in French but I'm taking notes in English because I'm a literate in French right I mean I'm doing instantly already established you can't do anything by way of French grammar that's right we already established that so this guy's babbling at me in French right and I'm trying to talk back to a French in French I'm taking instantaneous translated notes in English right timing the voice of a very independent and creative novelist like yourself work a custom to working alone who is who's whose whose whose own voice own literary voices is admired by critics all around the country making that voice match the voice of a strong director like Hustre Gauvers I would think it'd be very very difficult said a relation well it's very you know it's like you don't walk into a baseball diamond carrying a football

I mean if I'm going to work in films I ain't working in films as a novelist all right I mean one of the things I first of all I love films right so I'm not going to bring in a lot of prejudices about boy oh boy you know novels are so great and everybody's going to screw it up if they make a film out of it uh -uh right I mean my feeling about changing novels into film is you buy the book throw it away make a movie and I'm real clear on that right I mean that's that's uh and the second thing is if you're going to work in a collaboration you know why don't you just put your ego in your back pocket right and start getting into the you know the formula of the collaboration and basically if you're working with the director um you know Costa Gauvers or Carol Rice or Robert Redford or Louie Mell aren't going to hire me to to to to just have free reign on my vision of the world right all right they said go back and write your novels yeah yeah I mean they're basically

hiring me to be a facilitator there'd be so many so many great novelists have gone to Hollywood and quote unquote been destroyed by it one do you think they really are they chose to do it right I mean you get past the age of 18 or 21 you're grown up you're a big person right and you make decisions the people started trying to make me feel guilty for working in Hollywood really and yeah I said what do you tell yeah it's like I've abandoned the aesthetics of some great art novels right to work in Hollywood you know and and the word Hollywood has this great connotation of lack of seriousness too much money and all this kind of garbage it take a look at films that have been made in the career you know in the 20th century I mean film is every bit as important in art or a medium an aesthetic experience is writing novels or poetry or dancing in the theater you know dancing or the theater whatever right but longer being field war never really became a national best seller region best seller fairly a

regional best seller that's the right way of talking about yet it is let's face it occult classic I mean occult classic it I know college students who think John Nichols probably can walk on water and I can I've seen it you saw that today what to feel like have a cult classic on your hands it's nice that there is some kind of appreciation for the work right I mean that's that's real nice it's also useful in terms of making connections right just connections with good people stuff like that also political connections right partially the work is political some of the work is fairly overtly political and the

fact that I have a reputation okay a semi -public reputation has turned out to be fairly useful politically it gives me a little leverage and means that I can be more openly publicly helpful in a lot of areas your voice right the voice has heard a little more yeah and it's and it's important to me that the voice be heard this even teasing politics here throughout this entire conversation I'm not satisfied that we've completed this conversation we stay right here and that I might say goodnight to our yes this evening and can we continue this conversation tomorrow sure I love to and we will continue this conversation tomorrow so thank you for joining us I'm Howard goodnight you

are playing every teardrop that you cry and if he ever makes you blue just remember that I love you oh I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it,

but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm pretty sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm pretty sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, but I'm