Interview with Alan Rudolph on Tom Robbins, Tape 21

ah hopefully not pick it up i guess is a terrific filmmakers so that have heard some opinions but good times are set to kind of think that they're either hundred reviews that there was it was a total disaster or that there is full why was it really it means the euro meant to their use all that must be doing something right you know that was true robin well i think that film this isn't about that that film criticism there should be like olympic diving and initially degree of difficulty involved with but the critics are becoming more about singer name in print you know selling tickets well i wouldn't doubt i love to stab that that skinny legs and all because it seems it is

completely vital it's timeless years since the eternal struggle of man and man and using religion as the referee audits cell area said said sir vast the canvass is over shoes plus elena goes forward backward sideways in time cast of eccentric characters in as a hell of a dance of the seven veils and they're so much different approach but also it done it's very topical always be topical you know the tension in the middle east and i don't think even if there's eternal peaceful will ever be a big subject and i somehow feel that getting through that film approaching a film like that making experiencing when you do you might stumble on to some truth towards an author such a thing as a solution to tours

of the problem but certainly are an understanding of that then there'd be able to convey to an unsuspecting viewers ii and jitterbug perfume would be a terrific and they're all i just find them all fascinating but the of all the mud like to try a skinny lakes will but i don't know that one some people in the sand and i think that he's so facile and witty and kasich inventive ways of putting stuff together you get so engrossed in that that you forget where you don't really see beyond that what he's really trying to say legion to stay or walk among tesla's quest well i think that death being facile and wit is as you say it is as a way of allowing the audience

and and deeper discussions and i think the tom represents is someone who is not afraid of exploring the true mysteries of our existence and he has the uk the the wherewithal to draw from any point in history and then bring up examples afford against times not counterculture user culture color and i just think that there is it's unlike oddities said airport bestseller ayers time you can sum up boyle what he's trying to do which is always the best the best kind of book to get into i would think speaking of airports in the way of you ever i will enter apple have you ever detected that i don't know this is virtually impossible but

if there could ever be a collection of tom robbins letters are missing certain postcards of their classics just classics and i you know i get in from all and random places from from random places you know and there are just great and they're always said to see an end entertaining and funny and you want it i keep party keeps echo y z wasting you're wise you wasting all this good stuff a postcard from italy but he doesn't seem to have a problem that he's got a deep well finally does nothing to locate of years where i'd spit keep doing it i tell a great conceits and i'm sure he didn't do this to draw attention and he did it because it was one or two isms of his experience was in still life with woodpecker work were sort of parallel stories and getting his first typewriter as a writer as a novelist and then had a note to seize the way through that

given up and writing longhand for last several chapters it's pretty good he is the mac cruelty and you can you know our people have that and people know that i know him and davin i just the last word in the last year i've had people come up to me or i bought a copy of fist would abide by a book about one of his books into a lot of bookstores and the woman behind the counter just restoring honor for ten minutes jeffrey radisson the revenge and a friend of mine and smother who is of a very brilliant writer and that in the fifties and sixties in europe there's been better in the last ten fifteen years of her life and i she just read girl

skinny legs and all and she's a woman in her sixties she's just thought was brilliant think she's read so it cuts across billboard i think the people who don't meet him i'll probably would enjoy them the most but i think he has to because you can't summarize what he's writing about too quickly and you know the funny thing for me and the reason his jacket summaries of what he's done because home do a pretty good job that you revisit that is not about that you know i think that tom will last a lot longer than that and you know the fact that he's writing now means we've got another struggling toward of us and

i know you had a television as a series of television an anthology that was on the air and we were talking and we have christian we all three men and there was about workers having dinner and this was in new york and i'm just at that table time and i came up with the story of those great and the next day it was in a hotel room in europe the next day he faxes me two pages and of the story that was announced in wanna give it to anybody was so good and he sees a true writer i mean that it doesn't wasted on other things and enjoys everything it seems but what he writes he really righted he i don't think tom as ever wasted written were never undertaken right note to alex about what to get at the story of literary quality to it and that means that he is

a he is a slave to his own genius he thinks that the opry together person he doesn't seem to be eccentric as alison is that you i mean you didn't get on all fours and barked like dogs and camera well thomas sees i think he's an eccentric but that's not to say that they're at you know you guys kooky whatever that is i think that thomas of an eccentric person who has a great appetite for life and and for certain foods to end i think he believes very unhealthy for him because it's worked out on paper certainly does to live where he lives

he's lived in your case is he's done certain ryder's quest when he was young man but the fact that heat really does construct his own world are is where there's was way of becoming aware of our world and the way the filters to him a singular use it rather well and i noticed in your kiss is to have a place to live but it sits that it truly is one cost a bomb barman after another and i don't think tom would want to be in new york writer unquote you know i think tommy is a writer wherever it is but i think the fact that he can get into his own prisoners own pace and the pig from life smorgasbord you know and the way he wants to i think very healthy form and yet there's nothing that's going on in an herb so i don't know how it does that maybe sits there in the morning with a headset on a ham radio or something that

is very much aware of what's happening and always seems to have a take on that cuts through the headlines in and then the fine print and he seemed to find the truths in with whatever's going on he's a dc security sarah fear insecurity and fear that in the way he writes i asked him the way he is as a person on the socks are unfair typing he's a bs of fractured optimist i just think he enjoys life a lot he's lived a lot to see limestone a lot and i think that day doesn't wanna waste a lot are hungry he has definite opinions but they're not on the not judgment that they're just the way we see saint and there isn't anything that he's ever done that i know that hasn't

in the end of it no matter what the circumstance or hasn't had a humorist a bar or a hopeful note he is not being a pollyanna way but in a way that reminds to fly spirit basically and out who even the rollercoaster he's pretty terrific hip at predicting things so and it did eight months ago that would be the bowles in and the jazz in the nba finals but he yeah he's good at the racetrack at the rich at the racetrack men's consignment prager he's very good with this mark haddon told who is good nose for a culturally what seems to be lasting and quality cursive is his last set of his most recent book half asleep in front of a chance using the stock market and certainly in that was written

before this craziness in the stock market he can get cbs or thomas thomas more ahead tom should be tomorrow's newscaster today at play about what's going to happen and six months when the dust settles a man and i speak about his subject to have a stockbroker and seattle in timbuktu and the same novel so that's a bit of a frequent flier passive in the neck and a writer and then to put off is fantastic with a man with a monkey here he's a big question i know but isn't it isn't at all a minute isn't it all is you have to have something to tell a story which are looking for is a clothesline and things hang on what you know or what you want an hour or what you'd like to experience in the process of

writing this thing and then an end to that too take years to write something which i think the normal is normal place for anomalous couple three four years have written that some things myself up but that kind of fun of the regimen is just press i know a lot of novelist taken a while to write books but time i think is a sentence by sentence writer and i think yeah i don't know how long it takes him to come up with some of the senses but all i can do is encourage and keep going because i think there were half truth gets in our cultural landscape and besides hearne you'll be hearing them in ten years and every street corner from what anybody wants to be hip at that moment in time robin

isn't it's pretty active impressive but a couple of women who say oh use it to show that in this and that do you know liane why are we here and is terrific they're in love with each other and that's wonderful what we would you know take a psychic to understand tom and she's very a very straightforward as a person you know alex is someone with a gift but dag see also a great cook and then these are lifelike us normal folk you know

but see i think she appreciates town and she doesn't let them get away with too much without the following which is very funny but it seemed to be a good day good match and you know i had it i don't get studies you in with anybody for a long time but it's what would this the reason why we do it is so i have a great performance very good together are the time as more outward outwardly eccentric than i am and says as circus posters carnival posters and his taste in art does is it takes a very specific person to really one of embrace that if you know see that way yourself and i think with alex he found a perfect match and she appreciates what he knows an end when he if she doesn't she lets them know but i you know i don't want us to talk about someone

else's barren but i just think that they're wonderful couple anne midgette is ready he says to people and certain women he'd find it difficult because they think he's he's transcending that they feel he's the us has the email server be there or you're talking about people don't read and boehner still a theory it's a little bit like the films i make you know there's someone there like mirrors reflect of images and a reflective surfaces and i end up when someone says something about tom being a chauvinist which a hundred but if someone said that this tiny more about themselves in their in their approach to it than what he's wry in fact to say that the males are the dominant their forces in those books is like go when you're eating you know because they're i think probably most of those books her a female as the main character

and that in skinny legs and all he's he laments that said the fed and says is the turning point all civilization when one the goddess was no longer the rollover was a god you know and suddenly we went from this agrarian culture to a lot of war and down all i know is says his affinity with waitresses should be enough to show that it is a show that's an ode to the times books it for two women that i'd been oh oh so i can't you know a frank sinatra concert ticket to the bobby sox originally named women love him just by saying that i know him gets me few people flirting us a hope it's ok with me it's said too much already you better be kind to me in this

family room my friendship for all forces but i know that she'll use about two seconds of this industry and it a stand that show for a couple of hours and here is that he deserves it you know lisa did to people consider him a seattle writer to given the scale and narrow opinions and you said you heard now we'll settle things anymore about it is doing a country i get a lot of cement and at a survey that are mostly air well the new york times interview oh what book with a frog pajamas for the woman is talking about the jury that war shes time a plane ride and having to drink wine and take drugs to get through the but the jury that review then it was postal adventures from genesis the last team that was worth again pitch that showed more what

about the critic of course they did about the book and i'd be surprised that woman ever was allowed to have to review again was really horrible but she drives to heap every cliche money could ever say about time and doing sausages many massacres but that it can snow minutes is he is not the history of houston i don't blame you i mean not because as readers why why why would you know you'd be up a couple times and its it's one thing if people make a point and reviews set you know what i didn't know that and that's probably true and that happens every now and then a minute not much you can do about it but usually it's it's people increasingly say trying to show you what they know as opposed to what they read another for mrs parker you

get good reviews we got some bad reviews but the ones that very few people could get past the point that we were showing a side of famous people different than what they thought they thought was should be so is like you an opportunity for for them just tell you what they know and then spit except or not what we had done and in fact ours is more accurate and anything define dorothy parker you have to film this could undo a town but it's typical of the new york times of which the river in addition to what might feel but the father's engine is a park or essays a bad actor ie oh yeah i think it's quite sweet in the movie is

and at the un the same way that you can't that the characters the characters critiquing his meandering i give you a meandering answer well i'm enjoying the weekend attack in fact and that's the only as the us really needs and that is the canary and the winery in and his national stature is in an assist anti machete and yet there that critics in egypt there so it is you know at least one where your family your mind before i can't you know i'm earning more from new seminal obvious thing i wonder if you'd asked me that this was a quiz show and you'd asked me whether what easing the reviews online tom robinson books i would say what it is for star reviews you cross the

border and emailing the un risen so when i taught junior times which was just an indictment of the reviewer really but i would've books bestsellers and there are internal bestsellers at the actresses do is restore who is an anthology america's writers and he's a regular weekly your weeklies trading yes i am he was so you say you know most people when they as reading people can be in and they said your books in

recent days announced that they got caught rounds but then he'll come and sign any actor higher capital he said i didn't i did a film a several years ago in portland and there they were having their own the premier event in portland last time if you want to come down with james whelan town then i thought i was with elvis or something it was when they found that they really have to say who is a space is known and it took a rather well i thought but i just couldn't believe that people really fly zone is it is an important unites called an icon that he is an important part of our culture he's one of the most vital components of contemporary culture and that's not to say it's the biggest seller are the most famous but that if you removed him from the infrastructure of american literature today beating a very

important pieces of its foundation because he doesn't is not afraid he's not afraid that anything back it up that's what so great about a back slap kasich entertainment behind and that says the cloak that you know it's pretty hard to not be seduced by somebody who's entertained so much you know and then the points sneak in and i like the fact that his books go off on these these sounds they visit these places and thought patterns and that debt take you away from what some view would call the plot but why you're going away at the other party was thinking of how it fits into the story so you're basically being able to enhance what you've already read in and be prepared for which are battery it is rather ingenious that way in and i predict that is i don't know what he's writing

though well he does but i couldn't help is this book and i think that people and i would all say that about the one after that till i think the time that these books there in perpetuity and not just because he didn't published once a bookstore has his first or second book they're still miss fantastic i wish that was true but my fill i think that can make a concise incentives that they have their own idea i don't really think of the day before easter roland davis i've i first met time maybe fifteen years ago or more and that was because i was i wanted to take even cowgirls get the blues that job properly as they call them has more directors who passed through her one or sniffed around it that i think any

single book and been in recent times and someone approached me they own the rights to it and debt and they said tom robbins can be in los angeles and could you meet with him and i was there at that time so we met with this producer at a restaurant in the afternoon and that would be i think or that the producer had written like a twenty page outline of the bill and they had it their mission to miss all of this is only we could start shooting and tons of boy i like you as the way we should go about this and i salami with someone's going to make a film off of what your books it's got to be open i mean it has been open to experiencing and you said there's no way to predict where we're going and an encounter while we're doing and this is plenty for me i don't need much more than that and we became friends after that turn them twice i chat erin and then we moved up her permanently and we see each other

the more he used to live in seattle mentally spent most his time not an arson while jewell seemed quite as often the way we i feel like we do well me get passed gus was probably a non inborn first let's talk with the town know it was sat everyone and i'm not exaggerating i would say fifty directors are more at one time or another wanted to make that book and was i guess my turn or somebody had gotten to me somehow i'd made a couple films and silliness like that but i always felt that die really knew understood it gunter grass did too but i feel that about any of tom's books and the bigger the challenge the more exciting i could get about the project and that all happened a time one day and said someone

who make a film of one of his books and it will be a big smash which would probably mean it's not enough to be a very good film and then you interpret all the wrong things but then they'll go back and start going you know paying up the proper is i think almost all these books are optional by somebody or other end and i'm sure there's a lot of people scratching their heads to as well as their pompey's getting his palm of scratching their heads at