Arthur Miller interview (1992)

welcome to the broadcast for over four decades Arthur Miller has been challenging theater goers with his personal vision of the basic conflicts in American life with a body of work including all my son's death of a salesman and the crucible he has gained a Pulitzer Prize Emmy and Tony Awards and reputations one of the great playwrights of our age his 1968 play the price is currently being treated to an all-star revival at Manhattan's roundabout theater and we are pleased to have author Mela join us now for a conversation about a life in the theater and to share some his insights about the theater as he sees it today there is much talk welcome first of all thank you there is much talk today about a revival on Broadway do you what do you make of that well count the plays darn many it's not a revival it's that there are a few musicals are making a lot of money but the sickness is there I don't see any sign of it going away it's simply that they opened a couple of hits which would drawn from really the past the nutty new shows Guys and Dolls most happy fellas right and the Gershwin yeah really crazy about you I guess it is right yeah and it's this is not a we don't have a healthy theater because so we're not being presented with the issues that you have to resolve in order to create a theatre wait a minute we don't have a healthy theater because we're not being presented with the issues you have to have does that mean that playwrights are not presenting us with the issues no the society isn't you know the plays come out of a situation it's no accident that at certain points in history you get a lot of plays so there's a confluence of things that bring about a sufficient interest by serious writers in the theater what we have now is the ultimate development of the market economy as far as the thetac is concerned that is a few shows make a lot of money and they leave nothing behind them when they close by that I mean we don't have a theater culture we don't have a group of actors gradually developing their art over a period of years so that you get an Olivia you get a Richardson you get a any number of absolutely accomplished actors an accountant when in the calendar we get people who are in and out and they're in and out not because they're not nice people it's that the situation makes it impossible for an actor to remain in the theatre for the most part there are very few like George Scott who will hang around it'll also have a movie career which is okay but he does come back but I thought the theater was fuelled by writers not by actor well it is but let's confront the situation what can I write how can a writer live in this theater you can't do it it's not it's not possible I have this play on the price and there to have a culture you have to have a past we don't allow the past into the theater there are a few revivals now now I'm talking about straight placement not music right so that a whole generation grows up and they don't know what happened ten years ago and nothing piles up nothing accrues nothing develops it's we wrote constantly starting all over again it's as though you bind all the libraries and all the books and what happened what did we miss what has to happen for a culture I think what has to happen is very simple with what has always happened in theatre one way or another the fit to be a continuous developing thing has to have support you can't do it only on the audience it has never happened not in Shakespeare's time not in the Greeks time not in Chekhov's time innocence time not in Britain today and certainly not in Britain today and not in Sweden anywhere where there is a going theatre I just direct the death of a salesman in Stockholm they have a theater with six stages in it 90 actors under 365 days a year contracts and they gradually develop people I have a Biff and play who's playing in one of Ingmar Bergman's productions on his days off he's already been Hamlet he's done Richard the third he's now Beth everybody in that cast has a background that maybe two or three people in this country a genuine repertory company well it's just a source you know we asked of the theatre that it do something that no other institution has to do if I were going to build airplanes I don't go out on 46th Street and ask anybody do you know how to build an airplane if so come and we'll talk to you these people are hired and they kept there and they there they're embedded in an airplane culture see we don't do that or if you want a baseball team we don't start the season by saying okay everybody who wants to play with the Mets show up at non-custom tomorrow morning and we'll we'll try to pick out a team the result is that when you try to cast a play here you've got to go to a very handful of movie stars who are still interested in playing in the theater if you look at Mike Nichols today he's got gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss and Glenn Close if you look at Tennessee Williams in streetcar named desire you've got Alex Baldwin and Jessica Lange well they get on a state for a small short short range of time they're all going to go two months right so when you say is a revival I'll tell you nothing has changed so what does the playwright do well most of them are working in regional theaters that's where most of the action is where they get a production that'll stay on for a couple of weeks let's say or a month the problem in a regional theater is supposing he writes a play for a man of fifty five well you know man of fifty five is not likely to be in a regional theatre and if he is with all due respect he probably isn't that great an actor oh by that time it'd have been off someplace else New York a la thing so the result is we have a lot of active production and where the plays require more than very young actors we're in trouble is Death of a Salesman the best thing you ever did well that depends on what production you were looking at I've seen productions of The Crucible I saw a production of a view from the bridge at the National Theatre in England which as good as anything I ever wrote but what's his name directed but but we can't just compare it on the page and say in 1949 Arthur Miller reached up and became a great American playwright and he has not done that good since then if you just compare it on the page without looking at the production well it depends on what you're looking for I want lassic American conflict that everybody can relate to that speaks to all ages regardless of the decade it seemed would argue that the crucible is that play it's produced about twice as many times as salesmen and what would you argue well in many ways it is more of a universal play as it turns out that play has many more productions here and abroad all the time and the reason I think maybe that that situation of hysteria and a conversion of little truth into a big lie is pretty universal but if I injected you with sodium pentathol and said Arthur which what would you say I honestly would know what to say to you you wouldn't know what do you think your friends would say those people that you care about that care about well it depends on what they've seen and the production they saw and if they've seen a hell of a production some of the others they'd feel differently why did you become a playwright well it's an affliction that I often think you're born with it say I had I never thought about becoming a player or not becoming one it just seemed to be the natural it shows you yeah I think a playwright is partly an actor frankly I didn't I didn't used to think that but I think so now and you are projecting your acting skills on other characters the difference with a with a novelist is usually the novelist is not an actor so he doesn't hear language whereas a playwright hears language the playwriting is an auditory skill rather than a literary one and you've got to hear they're gonna hear what your voices you got to hear the dialogue and you hear the characters are they they're trying to get out well that's a pleasant fiction the truth of the matter is said that's what this is about they're not there I think characters are projections of the author obviously there and a different size of his apprehension of reality someone once said about you he is at bottom and odd man who happens to hear then transcribe voices in his head a shy child of absolute talent well I don't know who said that but that's a fair the way I feel about the art is if I can't hear it I can't write and if I start to write dialogue that is visual dialogue as words on a page I know I have to quit and if in fact let's say whoever we feel that we want to put on this pedestal you and Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill and and then go to other ages and other times and whether it's Chekhov and Shakespeare and and and all of the best regardless of a nationality what would they share in common you think what gift what is safe to say oh good I don't mean to don't be don't be embarrassed by putting yourself in the category of those people and I tell me do that but I mean I understand your question I personally think that what the big ones have in common is a fierce moral sensibility which is unquenchable and that they are all burning with some anger at the way the world is the little ones have made a peace with it and the bigger ones can't make any peace and are they fewer today you know uh who knows why we're speaking somebody maybe up on a some corner of some apartment house now writing a message with an idea of burning in you or her yeah it could be so I'm not prepared to say that it's over at all I could repeat boringly I admit that the situation in the theater repels that kind of talent because there's no incentive see we blew the audience the audience for this kind of stuff has has become minimal we the prices are too high a lot of people who would love to go simply cannot go the hole any schoolteachers intellectuals or people who don't make a lot of money it's a hundred dollars anyway you cut it it's really insane you can't expect motivated get there and eat dinner and uh that that's that by itself makes it impossible to speak in the terms I've been speaking they have we can you argue without being too pompous and pretentious that we are at a loss as a nation because the theater is not alive with the great conflicts of our time and helping us understand who we are and the great dilemmas that we face and if we were grappling with those issues both in the theatre and in our public dialogue we'd be better off as a society I'm sure of it but let me just say we we're not really we're not really alone in this you see the closest related cultured ours is the British in this sense and if the British had not established the British National Theatre back in the 50s they would have exactly the situation we've got namely a purely commercialized theatre which cannot take great great risks not because they're not nice fellows but because the costs are simply beyond what reason would suggest the British theatre now the Broadway part of it the West End is on the ropes why because their costs have gone up and they cannot risk what they used to be able to risk the national theatre and the the other subsidizes from time to time are doing marvelous work did you take the ride down Mount Morgan to to London first oh yeah yeah it's been produced if it did it'd make a difference I mean was the reception over there different do they appreciate American playwrights more oh they do appreciate I don't a player why is that well I think for one thing they've got let's say a dozen major newspapers in London so if one guy says it's the worst thing he's ever seen another one says I liked it or another one says I have liked this done this is a big question about the singular power of the New York Times because there's no competing voice well they they have no such thing that's the consequences that people are more likely to oh well it's not a masterpiece apparently but they say it's quite interesting well quite interesting here means it's closing tomorrow morning it can't be quite interesting it's got a stiff gotta be way this thing that ever happened of course that's not fair to say is it I mean I've seen well you know it's it's at that black and white they've got a show and enthusiasm that is whoever's doing it for the times that you cannot miss this yeah if he I think but he says you could miss it then they won't go finished now if there were two other three of the four of the five other major venues like that it would be quite different let me take it back to 1914 forty-seven was the first plate all fall down right that was all my son I mean all my sons all my sons that was your first success did you know then I mean that you were good that it did it Feuer did you say you were a young man then you were in your what 20s that was about 29 yeah honey but I had written about 10 plays the other time yeah this was that not even the first one had been produced on Broadway you had another one wrong way and then you're in a novel yeah yeah this comes along in it and it's Clurman likes it right that was Clement in Kazan because they formed a small company here overnight but then two years later you come back with Death of a Salesman how long was that bumping up in your head probably all my life really you heard those voices that bit was there also let's not forget something and that was that I was surrounded with an audience and a culture and a city which had I don't remember how many newspapers with critics the area the the atmosphere rather was not hostile I mean it's not me alone but any playwright will tell you he feels he's in occupied country which is not occupied by his troops occupied by whom by the enemy and the enemy is this whole culture he feels he's really in a corner and maybe with some miracle he can squeak through and gain a few yards well this is ok maybe in the automobile business but in the arts is deadly but you had nowhere to turn him isn't this is what you are playwright so you got to deal with it I'm still doing yeah I know you are you're working on something now yeah what's the name of it and what it would still it's called the last Yankee what's it about it's about the last Yankee to me who was the last Yankee it's about a carpenter and his his wife up in New England and you're a carpenter too aren't you well you you build roads you live on a farm bill furniture any bit of it autobiographical not really accepting I know but all of the characters autobiographical it away alignment with question is moot I mean you can't even begin anybody who writes writes about what he knows and what soon after after Death of a Salesman you went to lost in to Los Angeles right you about a year later 1950 you went out there oh I wrote a screaming yeah for about the waterfront video but was it ever made into a film what happened well we ran into the Cold War yeah the play the movie was called the hook and it was about the corruption on the Brooklyn waterfront where I spent some time and to make a very complicated story much shorter Harry Cohn who wanted very much to do this because Kazan was a director he wanted in his employ got nervous because the whole Red Scare was starting so he brought in the FBI to read script and the FBI read the script and the worse than that the head of the union's in in the movie industry Roy Brewer who was a buddy of the head of the Union in New York on the waterfront they were the same stripe and he proclaimed that all this was a lie that there was no corruption on the waterfront and within two years ahead of the Union that I was writing about was in sing-sing and a long stretch for racketeering but they managed to kill the you met Maryland then just bring all Monroe but you knew her that time introduced to her and then you correspondent after that hardly just Luba yeah how did you come to know her well she was working on a film that she had a small part in I can't remember the name of the film and I was in that studio just briefly on some business and I met her you know did she come here to come back to to the east for acting because well she thought you good does she wanted to get out of that career that she was now Restless in she want to become a real actress and she thought she could do it by going the Actors Studio that was basically why she wanted to do it good be here and is that when the two of you became yeah much has been you've written about this too in your own memoir characterize her well that's difficult at this stage of the game she was a how can you put it she was everything whatever whatever anybody was she had a little of it and it was a disastrous combination of powerful impulses in every every direct all within her alone all within the same woman artha nila back in a moment stay with us Arthur Miller's here let me just stay with this period of your life because it also was you believe that they were these competing demons within her then she was tough at the same time vulnerable and what else you name it was there irresistible as a woman she could be but she was flying apart toward the end smart well she wasn't smart enough to survive yeah wanted power now she wanted to be good to be good which is different isn't it well it corresponds sometimes if you good you're powerful what was the magic between the two of you before you got married although I know but stay with me for a second because it is of interest to me it it there were any people said this is east and west you know this is brains and beauty this is well she was our heart like anybody he was see the problem with her was that nobody could give a sexy woman is that credit for having any brains even then especially evident specially that yeah she's been much better off today you believe also that Lee Strasberg was a negative influence I think on the whole he was he made people more dependent upon a kind of guru yeah you know they're her teachers who try to teach so that the student no longer needs them and there is a teacher who tries to teach so that the student can never do without him is dependent and the second kind in my opinion was Lee Strasberg yeah and she felt like she couldn't do it without oh you couldn't do anything yeah couldn't really had to have his wife with her on the set the issue is everything now the how do you believe she died I have a clue I mean do you believe there was foul play or I really don't know anymore than I read in the paper there was suicide or world I can't even speculate about it who knows what happened what was happening on the misfit you were there it was at the end in a terrible conflict well it was a confidence was difficult to hold on to and she had a terrific responsibility there so she would feel terribly responsible for it and know that she and believe that she wasn't doing it well enough or that people were not giving her enough help or whatever back to you they're all of us you can write about this and think about this better than most want to be doing something professionally at work whether we are a carpenter building furniture as you do a journalist as I am a playwright as you are at the same time we wanted to be matched by being madly in love so I guess I want to know was it a happy time for you uh for a while but then after a while our dependency was too much she was ill she was no women ill from dependence on pet pills or psychologically as why couldn't you write during that period what too distracted in five years no was it therefore when after the fall came twenty it was their sense of I mean did you just feel something back inside of you stirring inside of you so that you and all of a sudden you're hearing voices economy makes sense of any play is an attempt to make to symbolize events that otherwise would go dispersed into space and that was exactly the same as my other plays it's the attempt to find a form for your experience either real experience or imaginary spoons but you want you need to feel a development and a rising line of conflict and a resolution to this which you can't find in life or rarely find in life so the play really gives a resolution to what doesn't exist in reality but my but why could you finally write it because after having been distracted because I could finally confront all the contradictions in myself and in the world that I was with had you made up with Kazan by then as you were yes to degree you know at your initially we he directed that play yeah it was that of the Lincoln Center in that time at your initiation of his or no cousin Bob Whitehead came to me said because Whitehead was the producer of the Lincoln Cent of the first producer and they wanted to create what they thought was going to become a American national theater with a core of actors the dream that we talked about at the beginning of conversation old dream it would be a it would be a new group theater accepting on a bigger scale and naturally I was very interested in that because I believe in and that was basically why we got together because we blow believed in the same thing after that incident edition that was in the same theater same theatre same at Lincoln Center is directed by Harold Clurman who you'd work with before yeah I mean she was an attempt to deal with what I've always felt is the most important single event in this century and maybe ever ever yeah I think that the destruction of German culture and the transformation of that people into the barbarians that they were is a lesson to us all and that this is saying to the world watch out these people were the most cultivated people in Europe they were probably the best educated people in Europe the most socially disciplined people in Europe in many ways the most progressive people in Europe and in a people in a space of oh it's a couple of years they were burning people up and you have to face this and why was it because of the malevolence and the you know we just had a Robert Harris he had written this book that you may call the fatherland out of time you know basically and I asked him about that and what it was about them I mean it's it's separated them able them to do it you know and he talked about the malevolence and the violence and and and also the political gift that they had that gurbles had and I guess I'm asking I'm asking one when from your perspective was it because somehow the German did it happen because somebody got control of the levers of power and then forced them to do it or was there some sense that the German people I think to put it very briefly Oh too briefly there is in all of us a retrograde desire to kill to destroy a love of the dark and that we have a lot of forces that keep us from doing it most of the time and that when a leadership arises in the country that believes that it can lead by using the darkness and man it's probably unstoppable at a certain point really well we've seen it in more than one place and that was the problem in Soviet Union the power over others the the willingness and destroyers is very deep in human mayhew Minh mine character that if you've got a regime with the talent that that regime had by Talent I'm in the industrial talent that the mission that the administration in power co-opted to and I used and found willing to serve their ends well it's a it it should stop anyone from thinking this is a purely German phenomenon unfortunately a lot of time it doesn't here's why I'm asking this without suggesting and by any meat remote means that there's some correlation and that America is in peril there are those who say that the American public today is attracted to being on being careful the words to a Ross Perot because they want somebody they can fix it that they're so disenfranchised by the gridlock in Washington they want somebody to fix it it's not what we're talking about but it is a sense of saying to someone come lead us yes well you ask people why if the most alarming thing about that whole phenomenon is that you must have had this experience you ask people well why exactly are you backing this man and they don't know I mean what is what does he stand for that you like and they say I just don't know I mean I know generally but I believe what isn't the relative merits it just says that there's a hunger I mean someone said to me the people who was supporting Perot without making a value judgment about him are more interesting than Perot than Perot himself it is in a sense he seems like a can-do guy in 1992 and somebody you know it's it's so I'm guessing it's a sign of exhaustion of course we're exhausted with having with trying to figure exhausted with democracy yeah I'm afraid so it is a way of skipping over the democratic process and saying look just leave it to him and he'll do it and he probably is a man of good will right and we we can't figure everything out and the best part about him is that he says look I don't know the answer people are attracted to that yeah instead of a man getting up as Clinton and then Bush have and saying I've got a program for everything I got a program for everything well they know by now that if they did they would be you know they'd be rich and they don't does it make you pessimistic or optimistic about our future I think we're going to live through this the reason I say that is because this isn't Germany in one respect this country has many civilizations in it which the Germans didn't have you mean our own heterogeneous quality yeah I mean while they'll talk about all these important issues of the theater in Texas that are talking about that and in Montana and in Florida and Mississippi they have other things on their mind so the country never gets to marching together I remember during the McCarthy period I went out to a little to Arkansas Fayetteville and I elected to have a history of Arkansas yeah and at the end of faculty sat around and McCarthy was I thought really was going to take over the government any week and everybody's running around terrified here and in Washington Chicago Los Angeles and they sat around the faculty cetera and said now what about this McCarthy I said well what about him and they said why is everybody so afraid of him I thought well this country's gonna survive they get they hadn't the clue they wondered what is so frightening about this guy but why did you think that some survived when they said that because it seemed to me that I would be maybe even more scared if they said this somebody's coming along who had the qualities that Joe McCarthy did and people weren't concerned about it I want to say well they were concerned but they weren't frightened of in there meaning that we can handle this thing I get that one yes it's totally difficult so they may as well been in a different country yeah there's a resilience and we know right and wrong and we right are you avail there was a uniformity in Germany that doesn't exist yet and at the moment now I'm not making nothing of it I think it's a very important development because at the moment Perot is a symbol of this skipping over of the democratic process in people's minds if for everything I can see he's a bit of an authoritarian I think on the way sounds but I'm not sure that this is going to end up in a disaster thing is that it could with somebody else who is selling self up - no - to contain the authority I think it's authority people want we've got very weak leaders we've had leaders who were including an inspiring I think including Reagan who really was a man wasn't there everybody knew he was in there they sensed he wasn't there that's what they liked about in fact that's what he said he was doing using local government wolf I would argue that that's not what they like about what they like about him is he seemed just like a he's that's right and that's what he said his genius was he said that he was right I'm just like that that's what and he also said though he understood I think I mean lukannon who was written a terrific first-rate biography called I think some of the role of a lifetime Ronald Reagan it's the role of a lifetime he understood the caring and the carriage and the bearing of all those symbols of leadership which you understand - I mean it is it was the way he somehow if you can somehow crystallize and articulate you know the the pulse of a nation I mean the way even though it came from a speech writer he was the person who articulated at the time of the the shuttle went down you know the way he used Peggy Noonan's words it expressed the sentiment you know a shield for the Lord every person that says something that I mean that's a quality of leadership sure maybe more important even than a knowledge of every very important thing as far if you want to be be a leader yeah that is the important thing see when Roosevelt come in everybody's forgotten he came in as a conservative yeah he came in preaching a balanced budget right everybody's forgotten this he wasn't coming in to spend all his money on WPA and welfare and the rest of it far from it he was a conservative rich man go get the country moving again right and within a ten months he realized that the whole thing was going down the tubes unless something very different was done namely to start spending some money and that it violated all the tenets of his original election but also what he had what Roosevelt had that was genius was I mean we have nothing to fear but fear itself it was the SAP was the leadership at the leadership and was lucid and and by the way Perot has got a similar kind of attitude that there is no problem we can't solve yeah but that's what a country needs does it not it sure does and that's what we've been missing it sure does and that's why everybody's upset because they don't think they think somehow we've lost that quality as a nation they look at the competition from Japan and look at the competition from Germany and they say you know whatever happened to the America I knew right now is that healthy or is should we be more realistic and say this is a new world and well I wish to God that some of you would be talking about the issues instead of making these poetic statements of what I can do and what I'm going to do and this is like how do you start to educate this population so that they can even run the machines as you got who's the best public politician you've ever met who do you admire the most what if Roosevelt well he was he was the matrix that they're all trying to imitate you know Ronald Reagan was a he was acting roseville right it Roosevelt was his hero yes he was roseville was the man of our era he was the fella who they all have to Kennedy was doing something about Kennedy tell me about Kennedy did you know him did you know I met him a couple of times yeah I I can't say that I knew him but I was mad about him I got it took me a little while to vote for him because I felt he was a hawk I felt he was going to get us into a war I felt he was a elitist I didn't like the smell of it I just had David McCullough here talking about Harry Truman in a conversation and he said Truman thought he was too young and too inexperienced and he ourselves yeah he said that Truman felt like Jack Kennedy yeah President Kennedy was too young at the time he didn't report him you know supporters to her Symington or others and well at the time it seemed too dubious like 43 years ago it seemed it was look too stylish for me would you like Steve I don't like Stevenson was about the best of them brains we haven't he made terrible speeches Niren everybody goes used to say he was a great speaker but you know my father was the best judge of these things he was mr. America and one night Eisenhower Stevenson came on and made a speech he was running against Eisner and then eyes now came on and after Stevenson came on I said to my father whoa what do you think my father was Democrat of course he said oh he's very nice when eyes now came on and said I will go to Korea Korean War was leadership I said what do you think he said well I can understand him and if you look at Stevenson speeches read them they are so prolix the sentence structure is so involved they aren't good speeches they're good reading yeah but the ear wasn't there and he loved these elliptical statements which reads so well but when you try to their will rather Germanic sentences you know the it by the time you got to the end you forgot what the beginning was I didn't think he was good at all is it fair to say that somewhere today somewhere in the world death of a cell is being produced and the crew ship was being produced probably oh no down yeah somewhere and the Chinese response didn't surprise you but surprised a lot of people you know the Chinese invented the family the whole idea of the family was the center of the world they also invented business and when I went there so they understood a Salesman even though people said they did you can't they'll never get it because they don't understand what a selfish after all in the 6,000 year history of China the Communists had ruled from 1950 roughly so now what is that that's like the blink of an eye it's me to you save all that a time it's nothing so when people said well they're never going to understand it indeed at the American Embassy at that time most of them said they're never going to get this you know they're very primitive the audience except one guy who was the political officer his job was to understand the politics of China and he took me aside he says don't worry about it for one minute they'll get it there's nothing in here they won't get however the style of the play was completely strange to them but once they got past that they got up sure yeah because it's human nature they're playing it again now in fact on the Miller's here we'll be right back stay with us let me just let the audience at home my friends at home I just looked at this is new this week's Newsweek and I said private lives had a fairy tale and rebel I said why are we so fascinated by this and you said we are but they aren't yeah my impression is they are and I would argue about that I don't think that there is madly interested as we are yeah I think one thing that there all the time yeah after all right there if you pick up a British paper you'll find that the one of them is is doing something every day of the week there is an orphanage other you know riding a bicycle or whatever it is see I I don't know but I'm fascinated by I mean I don't know I don't know how I feel about it I am fascinated and and there is some about Marilyn Monroe you know somewhere which represents in American Gloria Steinem and Norman Mailer and you in a very real way as journalists and writers they've been fascinated by a thousand question it is only respect partial respect for your privacy that prevents me to asking you you know was she the most beautiful woman a lot of other question what was she like all of that I have less curiosity about this I don't mean I don't really care about what he's like or what she's like except that is this the end of the monarchy and does this have it as this in peril a monarchy that's an interesting question for me yeah I think it probably is going to shake itself down now if they all get divorced yeah because it's a you know the Church of England he is the head of the Church of ingress I know and if he's going to be he will be if he becomes the Church of England forbids divorce just as much as a Catholic Church yeah well I heard the latest I heard is they're probably gonna patch it up because they understand what's it say they will sure actually if you can you imagine doing anything other than writing well uh yeah I could what I would have loved to farm really yeah but I wouldn't want to do it in the area where you had to clear a lot of rocks out of nowhere which is what is I know come on yeah you and however you'd want to be a farmer but you'd also want to be a philosopher in oh yeah well the way Jefferson was a farmer it can be done yeah you like seeing things grow yeah and there's a lot of wonderful interesting work and breeding plants and Lola you know what I like about it too is the notion of the people somehow connected to the land I mean I can romanticize this probably more than it deserves but it is the notion of people who somehow connected and and what their whole life is dependent on and relative to what happens between the land and themselves it makes them different if a one this season 10 is the rain as the elements and they're the bin sex and all of those things are a fact and they're very real things well for one thing in order to do that kind of work they have to be more or less able to do all kinds of other techniques like welding now they have to know about metals they have to know by wood they have to know about whether soil a thousand things to do with the machinery you could never have been a screenwriter you could you better sell wouldn't have lasted very long because the idea of writing something and it is owned when you write it by somebody else offends my private enterprise of feelings but basically I want to be able to stop something when I don't feel is going see if you're a screenwriter you've got to go to the end you stop marching yeah and you've got to go down to the end with it and there are too many other voices in there I would get exhausted I would get so tired I would fall asleep and listening to them and what about novels well a novel I it's a different story of course it's yours until you give it away there so why haven't you written more then it always seems I'm actually I have written a long story which is presently being published and about 70 pages and I'm writing another one which is a little longer well be like short novellas I love to write prose Saul Bellow did that right now short novella got a long history yeah I love to do that but it's not quite the same charge as when you writing the scene in the play is the naked truth to me is in a set of speeches so that between the lines it's exploding all the time you don't find that in prose very much and you don't find them fit or either very much but you can't do it are you born with that talent I mean you know you I used to think so of course now they teach playwriting all over the place respected Yale yeah but what I call a play is very often not what other people call the play how does it differ well I think it my idea of a play is that it is intensely integrated so that literally one thing forces the next thing to happen there can be nothing arbitrary in it but this is a kind of a rigorous scheme which a lot of people no longer are interested in they want effusions they want color and they are not necessarily interested in this the gradual development of a theme in the musical sense do you think you're every bit as good as you were when you wrote at the beginning when you had such enormous success in the beginning who knows I feel that it is the skill there I mean you know well in your judgment not in anybody else's this skill is there it's just a do as you grow older of course you have to fend off the realization that this is not going to change the world yeah which was the illusion you started with and furthermore in this particular thinner that we're in the New York theater you have to blot out of your mind completely what this theater is like the surround of hostility yeah otherwise it'll be defeating of your esteem and sense of well you just become from CENTAC it'll destroy your time see for example if you I write a wonderful part and you can't get actors to plant for more than two or three months well you know some people step forward as you know and say well that's because mr. Miller hasn't written anything that anybody wants to do or something like that well accepting they won't say no he's answering to the entire community with his own well tribe eleven other playwrights and see what is he think I'd get the same answer sure look it makes sense from the actors point of view he the price is on on Broadway and they're making seven hundred and fifty dollars a week any one of those actors working in television or on the film would work the same amount of time for several hundred thousand dollars if not more right so you're asking them to make what the litter sacrifice they are supporting the food yeah and it makes sense only if it does something in addition Frank so why should they do it all right you know any great regrets I mean you're you're still look to me like an damn good shape but as you look at your life any great regret yeah I have a lot of them but I don't want to well just give me one the biggest one I suppose that this doesn't sound much like a regret except it is I feel that had I been connected with a Theatre there would have been twice as many players sounds crazy but I think so it would have been it would have it would have been an incentive it would have been creative it would have stimulated a bit in a friendly atmosphere which the people who wanted your stuff rather than a group of gamblers really we're looking at this and saying well can we make our money back twice double triple just about uh if you knew it had a home you would have been more absolutely it would have been more moved to get up in the morning and go out to your study and you'd figure you right away you know there's a British playwright what's his name right he's written about thirty five plays now he just had one here a small family business you knocked Balon Akron egg Baker right he solved it he established a small theatre up into a small town and he comes from 4050 miles away from London he's got a nice tidy little audience there but he writes a kind of a play which is perfectly admirable yeah but it's not my kind of a play but nevertheless by the way he directed that marvelous production of a view from the bridge and layer which was the last thing I would ever dreamed he would ever do and what would you most like for your colleagues to say about you you know a long time ago there was a playwright named Sidney Howard who was all but forgotten you know it was a very good writer and somebody asked him that same question yeah and I think probably if he gave the ultimate as he said say just that I wrote some damn good parts thank you pleasure dad Arthur Miller we thank you for sharing this time with us see you next time

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

Views: 52,570

Rating: 4.8726115 out of 5

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Id: coWRDfpqa6A

Length: 54min 35sec (3275 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2016