A Word on Words; 3516; Jane Smiley

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs dancing in the welcome once again to award own words i guess today was jane smiley pulitzer prize winning author of a thousand acres movement or seven and she's here today to talk about her new book ten days in the hills welcome jared heavier talk about

your own version of the cameron and days in the hills above the cover yes i'm actually arrived there on the phone about that gives us a fifth day he's found a sixty two year you know this is a book about hollywood and somewhere inside the book i think of bill freeman and cassie to the older character talking and one of them says they'll make movies about people like movies about hollywood then as well as like a sunset strip and start to form obviously you like movies about hollywood or the books about well i am i do like movies about hollywood and in fact now that we have had the dvd rental ace revolution where only get the directors' commentaries that all movies are about how it went they are indeed because it becomes self reflective which is great for me because i i sat and watched a lot of directors' commentaries and not

an actress commentaries in order to write the script it was a great privilege and the treasure i enjoy it a lot you know if you use both it's astounding to me how deeply and immerse yourself in the culture of tons of silly well there was a difficulty just satellites live reason lice directors' commentaries and just can't nothing i am but i also lived in california now and so a nice and i would go to la and drive around and just driving in la driving in pacific palisades have the book is set in pacific palisades and and then those sleigh less than half the seven bella just driving around here real feel for wet wet the life there is like a man i just read and watch movies and watch directors' commentaries and i'm

but the book isn't only about hollywood that that one of the houses that they go to is a house where the owner is a russian billionaire has bought up a lot of paintings on the black market lot of art objects on the black market and so one of the things they do is look at all of his paintings so that brings in another dimension to the stage let's talk about your thing you put together a crowd of people and people that in the beaufort and yet men and they are it's not fair to say they're stuck with each other i mean so i am worried about the family and extended family and friends end up ten people together ten days there were tensions run deep tensions on occasion for being together is that it it said the beginning of the iraq war so that some of that there's a central couple maxson alaina time he set up the

hollywood director who has fallen and a little bit on hard times and she writes but self improvement books and they and their children show up and then and there happened to be others around the neighbors around the friend you say that you don't show up in what really happens is max and daughter isabel shows us that size as elena son the ellen show them but louisa virtually <unk> the law and their children together and then i'm a narrative as an ally now or max's ex husband who is the movie star shows up with her boyfriend but and if people will remember around the time of the iraq war there's a tendency to sort of enter the bunker and just be fascinated by the beginning of the war and maybe to be frightened of it and so that's their first impulse the first impulse was kind of hang out together and try and figure out what the new world this album that

make as that my inspiration was that he can run by giovanni book catch it was written during the black death in the middle of the fourteenth century in the book and about patchy out they move from one lovely castle to another even lovelier castle so i had to do that is to have to give them a reason to move max is fast to on this other house with all the paintings are and so the reason that i gave them was that they've been invited them never be able to see this again i'm it's a very special place and also then motivator which is max's agent man about thirty seven are very at stony stony he doesn't want everybody to leave he's is quite a and that is a lovely guy you might say and he doesn't want everybody to leave so he toured attacks them into moving to the russian the house he lives in his own lunch delivers in the shadows followed yeah swollen legendary agent if we imagine sid caesar as an agent that sits

down his father and he has been dead now for about a year and stern has had a very difficult time i coming to terms with not necessarily the death that the demise of his father who died of a brain tumor and a challenge to live up to me as a father and i think he gave up a net years ago well you know you can tell you cited max back into into a row yeah sounds of the maxim had a bad year also it involved an angioplasty and a few other things than he's allowed his career to to slide a little bit command says downie would like to get max i'm moving again and he has the occasion to do so because some russian billionaires have come to him and said would you please make a chile authentic if you can imagine the chilly authentic version of goggles

but passable a global which is a great back and reason i played and it has been unusually active lats and the reason that flooded in that is because i love the bucket i love the style of the book and it's a wonderful book but it also is about how that takes place in asia and we sail it is if you read the book there are russian orthodox polish catholics and muslims all and just do all bumping together in central asia so it has a certain currency that maybe we didn't realize it had back in nineteen fifty you know and when we did realize that there was this potential powder keg and the lilies so busy anyway these russians were like max who has been who has made an epic or two in his day to please make this movie will max's id at the firm max the

idea of lead in pacific palisades and going to ukraine for a year and make this movie is completely not enthralling he liked to make a different movie and when yeah when when one story begins to push and that's really showing what he really wants to do is interesting for more interesting than movie about my love making with atlanta yes here like to make and an indie feature serve as if it were my dinner with andre but it will be an hour and a half have another laundry was a movie you'd made which was well actually is a movie had it isn't in the movie anyway and scientists that way a son that one another way inside son is his name at the moment i can't remember but anyway i will tell you that it's really awe eccentric movie and study cannot believe that maxwell as fire to make the ninety minute movie about to a man and a

women in their bedroom talking and and not only a man and a woman that oh man his alma sixty and a woman who's fifty thousand us about this bomb you have max interact with real people in the industry well he has interacted with that is naturally and he says now he made another <unk> well even notice the bump that i'd had and you know he would do that i mean it's not just and you have to envision whom are known to be used to think i'm alone well not quite as elaine nothing for that you know there are a lot of jokes that i laughed at midnight began as i was three as i was writing about that next to have to have a body of work and so i and i gave him a respectable movie and then i that that he had won an oscar for for screenwriting and in that movie the

star was that what a star or whether wonderful actors that we might remember cause they really palmer really awesome winter x henry harrison and then i also gave him an epic not an epic poem a big blockbuster type movie anyway it's ucla this last act underground by huge credit earthquake that gap well as well a production of media is going on an and to me that was really the one of the most fun parts was to make up all of their movies at ascot and makes a thunder redo because it really puts max elaine and sony they're interacting with real people and interacting in conversation about real movies that are saying now i live and there's everything in there

from great movies that everybody's singing i mean there's a there's a mention of beau ryan cast of vitamins and also you know it julie as they watch a movie that kind of second home but they have a little bit of that they have a place to watch movies and so every night they watch a movie well it happened that i was doing the research in the la times i read that the la times for every day of their ten days and one of those days the la times published a list of the ten greatest disaster movies and some of them you've heard of and some of them and nobody's heard of that land them was the movie called the day the earth caught fire which is a movie made by an english director and takes place in england very black and white quite inexpensive movie but it was a wonderful movie and senate bay what's that they weren't sunset boulevard we deal with it i think and that they

want to pass a blackout and so i get that have them converse a little bit about the movies that really existed and it may also confirms their allegations when conversation at dinner party drops inevitably some ways of what your favorite movie at how immediately the composition lives and everybody interaction everybody's got a separate they written in the critical of all and that's what the conversation frequently turn out to be i mean but this is also that takes place at the beginning of the iraq war and there is a plenty of conversation about that they have differing opinions about it the top of other permanent charlie so then charlie don't know whether the political his asian between alaina and charlie in which elaine are eyeing another melissa the public my decision was the author i mean this war is

senseless and very early so the public has not come to wear line is they're very early and charlie's dumb comments about it are solos and comments and we hear from people are still trying to defend or let's say china as a republican and is that what is that he had been working a pensacola is the sort of corporate executive type republican from new jersey and he really sees no reason to doubt the administration he he's he feels i think deep in his own mind he feels while and they make take such a big gamble if they had no say inside knowledge that they were going to succeed or or whatever and so i think up to his positioned as the position that allow people talk back in two thousand and three elaine as position is a position that i am a

significant but maybe smaller segmented population talk which is now we don't believe that there is a reason to do this and she and that's just has a certain temperament she writes books about self improvement i mean that she's writing right now is called i think it's got something like how to do everything correctly and so this is a person who thinks about how much sun black to wear at any given moment during the day you know that's the end and exactly how to get year out of the way the pictures that year i'm here watching spiders into the microwave to make sure that it starts sterile the next time you use it you know that's why she thinks unfair person like that the massive bailout a rock or even in prospect is terrifying max who has directed several epics in his day is suspicion about the administration is that they don't have it together in terms of organization and indeed they they didn't insist this

is a momentous management's my outside the apple and a new plan for tomorrow and that's to mr allison for those you just tuning in i guess the mortgage and smiley were talking about a new book ten days in the hilton it's a lot of like a should i try it out in the book i thought about max actually worked out a house out of a bedroom oriental in which the army's an end here he finds the house's philippines is that i've invited and the people it i just thought about it how i would be as as that as opposed to in a house so that included my lover my formal wife mazzoli they say that because the direst coming comes because the dollar that bugs only brings paul very elaborate <unk> and the relationship between them the

tears that goes here want a ballpark hot as dr paul is i mean you and paul is somebody everybody has read about a few people i met by even the yoga he's in the food and know that present are on their way to this monastery up north in california to sit out the war doesn't want to do and see as a while ago and says she tacks and becoming there and then she kind of talks them into letting them stay which drives the daughter crazy the donor and now is there's a little bit he and zoe divorced but delphine who is always mother still lives there and is there the next door neighbor cassidy who had a real i mean she is funny and wanted an unloved have an excellent i'm like as well the stories they can see cows are in many cases not one hundred percent in many cases true hollywood stories and so she is because she is one of those people has been in hollywood for years who came because her mother was writing a movie says she came as a child and she

is then us she's an art dealer and she's then survive the periphery of hollywood for a long time and she knows we're all all the bodies are buried she does win all the bodies were doing before they died to so she's kind of the voice of history and actually a jumble of months later us a movie based on a book or mullah yes i think that and then you give a job low i'm in an amnio know they have them in some of the staff and how so and arrested and we just opened up another new world i like paintings and the rest and hasn't made up to buy it it didn't have a lot more are two painters that we now that actually really so that was really fun to say cabal out of paint a great deal of attention in the book exists between the

daughter of max and zoe vs is about the us then is a is a bow is on joey's back yes every time so it opens her mouth and sale is a bill or a conference or an undersized incident at one point simons who is elaine assad a long time as it as a lovely nice bright side effect less aimless and is about death a very direct straightforward and not blameless but anxious you might say twenty three year old and they look at each other the one point an end and isabel think see now i can stand him now but i'm sure glad that we didn't have to deliver an end when he was and then a little ways in about second day we found out that his bones only heaven heaven how much over here's matt zoller and that's pure about patio

when i i that to me was quite daring at he had been sort of coming around since she was about on the seventeenth the sixty now seventy nine he was about thirty bat that they have to maintain their relationship over the last couple of years she has had another boyfriend but now she is back here and he in his survey less way that kind of takes up with her again and she says he now we're a listener and so one of the things he has to do in the course of the book is in some sense i try to prove to her that he's not a loser and these were the at least of her respect if not of her affection and attention between as velma mother is his ongoing and you know i think the first talk about how you have a

good book out you come to give you the inspiration for this vacation ascendant additionally what you i love them but i love the d camera but that the people are seven women and three men and the camera not related there we're squeezing think of that as this group of young people maybe in their early twenties and how long ago to really count i read it and i in two thousand and one shows just before you began work on right and that i knew that if i as an outdated to cameron it i wanted to have a family and so first people i thought of were maxima later and then daffy and i knew that there was a mother live there and so people began actually to a crew around dauphin her in the neighborhoods her friend than i am the granddaughter who really adores her and the daughter who's next is ex wife and so pretty soon everybody came trailing their new friends and i am and pretty soon there is ten of them really exciting moment

when max now suspicions that his agent stony have an affair with him nor his work and found mr bob next and then the laughs are now out of gas that causes announced bedroom have the next have the next deer alliance which happens sometimes in california as very dangerous in terms of the teenage population itself and one of the things that i wanted to do in the spark they all tell stories that alexa stories they watch movies that they talk about the attire as bilbo which is the novel i wanted to have as many types of narrative as a kurd and i realized as i was rewriting the book that no nobody allies and said somebody's hasta la high and said there's a moment when max approaches is about to ask her what's going on here and it's of allies and this is really unusual for is about to do that is not natural wire that

she does want to avoid talking to her father about studying until she realize till she kind of figures out what's up with stony but she lies and then there was another gripping scene is a bow and so in the closet yeah usa's in the pantry finally have it out and help is listening says la joe is about forty two years old she is a successful hollywood actress i would say she's not a superstar but she is she is a well respected star and this she has had her own interesting life and final and i would say is about has been on her case for a long long time and finally back isabel corners l e and bomb and begins to serve verbally attacked her and that i don't sweat and you know

so it brings that brings out the big guns and their argument she tells isabelle honestly on what her motivations had ben for leaving menudo its huge interest in kosovo is fascinating characters in the story but i don't know about though i don't know the life you've lived i don't know why she is so an impulse control until that confrontation in the pantry in which she used that confrontation to tell us what we need to know about so how clever it was how do you write was because different economic all my books are different none that when the chorus haven't was dictated by the horses out of the barn and this park was such a pleasure to write i don't know they just started talking and they just kept talking and every day i sat down and they talked and when you write it in the morning is a new job for your morning why did the job but it's not that i own at the task but

it's not a job it's not onerous i i i was very fond of these characters and i didn't mind having them be talking awarded the outset but there's so many of them that i would have trouble keeping what you create characters with such distinct and distinctive is that every is very easy as a coalition is sometimes that's just a practical matter like that they'd nobody has the same first letter of their name and it and then physically they're all distinct lead that physically different and they're also of different ages so that kind of helps you to keep investing and we knew we begin to roll our book it will stay with it and does it become a daily absolutely sure i mean having a deadline helps but he also i didnt try writing a book i am i tried reading good faith it is a rare three pages a day five days a week i

tried just as an experiment to write my butt good faith one page a day every day for a whole year but i found that that didn't sustain the momentum didn't sustain the energy very well and so i had to go back in the middle of that book to my three pages a day so this is what i have the habit that i developed this i started but i write three pages a day five days a week this is your daily news thank you go just a mile a minute left what's next well i have a very eccentric old relative is lying dead down that he was out and a real oddball he was a physicist who decided that relativity was just bull and so and i say in the world of physics he is reviled but in our family he's seen as is this kind of strange interesting all relative and he lived in vallejo california sold real alan wright about his wife actually well when it comes out i hope to be back i think if we run out of time and

then talking to jane smiley thank you so much for being here thank all of you for watching for word on words and just ignore keep reading yes i do