"Sunday Morning": Writers on writing

[Music] foreign and that's where I work right there I jump into this chair before I'm awake I roll out of bed right there do you wake up with thoughts oh yeah oh definitely for a best-selling author Anne Rice it's been a dramatic some might say shocking conversion this for example is a beautiful crucifix that was in a Carmelite Convent in New Orleans home in Southern California with her antique doll collection and her late husband's paintings her return to religion is everywhere that's a statue where our Blessed Mother this is the statue of the boy Jesus after nearly four decades as an avowed atheist writing about vampires and rice is back in the Catholic Church back in her favorite writing attire flannel night gowns and writing about Jesus the first in her series of books was published last fall Christ the lord is about Jesus as a seven-year-old something the Bible never touched I wanted to say look you know the story is is considered by Skeptics to be far-fetched the Virgin birth the Magi the Shepherds okay it's far-fetched come with me and when you're in this novel you're going to believe it I'm going to make you believe I'm going to use every skill that I ever use to make you believe in vampires and witches so that you call me at home at night and ask me if they really exist I'm going to use that same skill to make you believe that Jesus is the son of God that's my mission most of these books I've been through and I've extracted something and learned something from just about everyone rice may be hoping for a miracle but consider her track record when it comes to the supernatural her books have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide in them rice broke popular convention telling stories not from the victim's point of view but from the vampires she wrote her debut novel Interview with the Vampire in 1973. the film version starred Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as Rice's glamorous sympathetic and sensual vampires [Music] [Applause] and now Broadway is about to host her Vampire Lestat a musical with vampires the first thing you thought of writing about not at all not at all stumbled over the idea of writing from the point of view of the vampire it was just something I tried one night I was just sitting at the typewriter and I thought well let me give this a try what would it be like if you could get a vampire to tell you what his experiences were like an interview with a vampire her book says rice reflect a long personal Journey these are French dolls and they probably come from 1890 as do the fragile dolls she collects like these dolls like this spot if they didn't you'd know they would look droopy why dolls Why collect I don't know I love them maybe it's something to do with my daughter losing her her name was Michelle and she died of leukemia just before her sixth birthday in 1972. it was in the wake of mourning while living in San Francisco that Rice found her voice the vampire was a perfect metaphor for the way I felt I felt like a lost person a person in the dark a person who was trying to find meaning in life trying to find a context New Orleans was often the setting the hometown she moved back to in 1988 with her husband Stan a painter and poet and their son Christopher he says he learned early he didn't exactly have the parents next door you definitely had to become a Storyteller early on to hold your own in the conversation and you definitely had to become good at Scrabble at age seven we were playing Scrabble when I was and they were yanking up these words like charlatan and I was doing dough you know rice was a celebrity and once famously dressed for the occasion at what point did you kind of realize do you remember realizing well my parents are are more intense than other people I think it was when we moved to New Orleans I think I think that's when I began to see other people relate to mom as if she were Anne Rice and that move to New Orleans also coincided with the publication of the Queen of the Damned which is the book that changed the way we lived forever Aaron Beckett's advance in five minutes you know they were selling it out of cartons on the floor and that was that was great and then the movie Interview with the Vampire was my high school lifestyle change that's when the other kids at high school were like dude your mom's weird but like cool she was born in 1941 into a strict Catholic Family her given name Howard O'Brien after her father as a young child she changed her name to Anne Mass was a daily ritual belief was a shield against hardship my mother died very young she died in her 40s and she died from complications of alcoholism how could you put this together with this Catholic life when you were leaving I think even then in the 50s we had a sense that it was a disease that it was something you know a terrible disease and the one time she talked to me about it she described it that way as a craving in the blood she said it was she asked me to say the rosary with her and she said her father had had it and she had it and it was craving in the blood it was after a move to Texas in high school that Rice says she could no longer reconcile her sheltered childhood with Modern Life I was curious I think curiosity is what destroyed me as Catholic wanting to know wanting to read books that were technically in those days forbidden they were on the index of forbidden books you know it was a very tight world then the Catholic the Catholic World so you gave up religion I lost my faith I stopped believing it I stopped believing in my church and then I stopped believing in God I think the two were very intimately connected for me rice says she wanted to make her own meaning and soon after married Stan the love of her life and an atheist too it wasn't until the late 90s says rice that her faith returned it was studying the Roman Empire and studying the first century that got me involved I started to read the Bible I started to read about the Jews in history and I could not figure out strictly from a secular historical standpoint how they could have survived and I began to think is this the hand of God however profound Rice's passage from vampires to Christ has raised some eyebrows after all her vampires were erotic creatures and under pseudonyms she once actually wrote softcore porn I wrote what I thought was almost like a theme park of s m a little safe theme park you know and those books are still out there and as far as I know they've never done anybody any harm I mean the people that bring them to the signings are usually married people they're usually ladies and they're laughing you know we love your dirty books they say they'll have a baby in a stroller and they'll say we left your dirty books write some more but rice has left her old writing behind she also left behind the city she loves New Orleans just five months before hurricane Katrina the whole New Orleans experience for me beautiful as it was and rewarding as it was was intensely painful it was often very dark your husband died yes that was the final thing that happened he got sick with a brain tumor and died in four and a half months and he was a healthy man a strong healthy vital Man painting pictures painting he had left behind 300 canvases she wanted to be closer to her son a writer himself who lives nearby in Los Angeles she was two hours south for me by car and I was the only driver in the family so I was in control of him whoa Christopher who says he believes in a God but isn't Christian is openly gay in fact some of his mother's new Christian readers find disturbing I think there was a point a couple weeks after the book came out where you were bemoaning the number of emails that she had received about her gay son but I have also received hundreds of emails from people and Christians included and Catholics who say we admire you for sticking up for gay people and we admire you for sticking up for your son love your son and there is a great shift right now in favor of accepting gay people into the churches and it's happening All Over America and it's a wonderful thing Orthodoxy rice says move slowly but eventually she believes the church WIll relax its attitude about sex a topic that never seemed to worry Christ she says they didn't go ranting all over the holy land about sex he was talking about love loving one another rice says it's Christ's message of love she hopes to get across to her readers she recently toured the holy land to make sure she gets it all just right now Bethany where Mary and Martha lived it wouldn't be here would it it was right behind the mountain right behind them and it's still there okay she is odd she says by Jerusalem's long history you know there's a part of every human being even even an atheist that acknowledges something completely mysterious about life itself this is the place where Jesus Christ was born I mean he changed history like nobody in western civilization he changed the history of the world Rice's series of novels will follow Jesus through his life she hopes to make the world of Jesus as compelling as the World of Vampires where once she reigned there should be a name for fans of Louise Penny's Murder Mysteries the L pack or the penny Posse maybe there we go got it to say they come from far and wide in large numbers to attend her book event is no exaggeration so we have as close as Nolton Quebec and as far away as England they've come all the way to the Canadian town of Knowlton in the Eastern townships of Quebec where Penny lives and her books are set many of you have come a great distance with me so I am thrilled to meet each and every one of you thank you it's as if her readers want to immerse themselves in the setting of her books which are as much about the backstories of her murders why people kill as who done it penny has published 12. they now routinely debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list or close to it her next glass houses comes out next month my books are about many many things probably least of all murder they're about life they're about choices and taking responsibility for what you do but really I think at their heart they're about love and friendship and food her characters all eat exceptionally well in the made-up Village of three Pines which Penny tongue-in-cheek informs readers can't be found on any map although her publisher has conveniently had one drawn three Pines is meant to be a refuge a refuge a sanctuary found by people who were lost the name has historical significance Legend has it during the American Revolution the trees were a signpost for loyalists to the British crown fleeing North to Canada to safety so what people would do is they would plant a cluster of three pine trees as a signal to these people that they were safe and that's how I got the name for the village her detective is Chief Inspector Armand gamash if I got lucky enough that the books were published and became a series I didn't want to grow weary of my main character so I decided I would create a man I would marry but before Penny herself managed to find three Pines and all its inhabitants she was lost I was drinking more and more and more the phone never rang the doorbell never sounded she had it made or so it seemed from the age of 21 she was a reporter and then an anchor for CBC Radio the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but she was also a secret drunk at 35 she walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and changed her life I left that meeting never having to drink again it was unbelievable you did not need to drink anymore I didn't the the urge to drink the the need to drink disappeared not long afterward she met and married Dr Michael Whitehead a noted pediatric hematologist more than 20 years her senior who told her that he would support her if she quit her job to write for five years she tried to write the great historical novel but then then I looked on the bedside table very well represented there were crime novels it was one of those moments where I just thought oh maybe that's what I should write that first book was called still life Quebec is a character a very real character in the books there is a very keen sense of place with each new book Penny's following has grown her fans seeking a piece of her fictional and Real Worlds the line between them often blurry oh I can hear that they're nice and crispy readers are convinced Kelly Shanahan's Bakery is the bakery in the books people come in absolutely expecting that Louise Penny is here somewhere and on this particular day a Louise Penny sighting does indeed occur [Laughter] the local bookstore has become a stand-in for myrna's new and used bookstore in the novels we usually have at least three groups a day not counting the bus tours and things bus tours really we've started getting bus tours now owner Danny McCauley they're really looking for a connection to Louise the books have touched them they've touched them personally they've been healed by the books and Penny has been extraordinarily open about her own life each month for her website she writes what reads like an intimate letter to a close friend it was here in 2014 that she disclosed her beloved husband Michael had been diagnosed with dementia and then last fall that he had died so many others have been down this road before Michael and me that there's comfort in that when fans show up for book signings it's not just about the books I love her books but I love the individual she's become part of the family mother and daughter Louise Penny has never laid eyes on most of these people before but they are not strangers after all she showed them the way to three Pines the sanctuary where she has now gone to find herself once more in her sadness the writing became a harbor it became solace it became a world I could control oddly enough all the decisions I had made 12 years ago about a place that I would like to live in and people I would choose as friends turned out to be my Saving Grace the village of Monte cherenone deep in Italy's apennine mountains is far from Umberto ecco's Milan home but it's a it's a quiet landscape as you see and there's a beautiful place to stay with friends and to work so years ago when Echo stumbled across this long abandoned farmhouse in the valley you just drove by it on the road and saw it and said yes more or less like that the Italian Professor told his German wife Renata he had to have it she said give me one good reason why they said I wanted during the most stormy night to walk around those corridors and rooms with the torch in my hand and an immense sense of power in my heart for Echo a scholar who likes to think and an author who likes to write it was the ideal Retreat especially here is beautiful to to work during during the night and 20 years ago after Echo sat down to write his first novel at the age of 48 quiet was something he was suddenly in need of the name of the Rose changed your life didn't it in a way yes obviously when it was published in 1980 the name of the Rose a Labyrinthian tale of murder in a medieval Monastery became a global phenomenon translated into 35 languages and selling 10 million copies please join me in welcoming Umberto Rico it made a celebrity of a little-known semiotics professor who now draws standing room-only crowds at book signings like this one in New York because the readers are more intelligent than the Publishers believe and more intelligent than journalists who Echo complains are always posing the insulting question tell me why so many people read like your books and I feel offended because it would be it's like asking a beautiful woman why all the men are in love with you not because I am beautiful echo's office is cloistered in a small converted Chapel at the far end of the family home the place I work no I love the column what's the story is an authentic fake it comes from the the set of the name of the Rose from the movie Yes did they take an actual mold from there yes it is yes only they repeated it several times that's the column there in the background of this scene the film of his novel starring Sean Connery brought Echo still more Fame but the writer says he also sacrificed something and so you you lose one of your of your powers as in order to to give your readers the possibility of imagining each of them a different phase for for for the character you write a book just in order to to get this result otherwise would paint a painting foreign his later novels Foucault's pendulum and the island of the day before have been more modest successes each took him nearly eight years to write as a narrator I can start only when I have a very poignant image for the name of the Rose was the idea of a poisoned Monk The Abbey in the name of the Rose was that a real place no but it was a collage of real place fragments of that collage came from the castle of San Leo in ancient times uh the castle was besieged several several times every Century in its dungeons the count of kalyostro a renowned 18th century charlatan and occultist was imprisoned for life and from the window he could only see the two churches and as a matter of fact he died he died here this is not a big space to spend our attention of your life in no and without TV without TV yes his mind leaps across time as a professor of semiotics echo studies the signs and symbols in our culture in his book how to travel with a salmon a collection of his Italian newspaper columns Echo Revels in the absurdities of modern life so you've never owned a cell phone now that I don't like to receive messages okay I I started communication but I don't like to receive messages the people who have something to tell me know how to reach me all the rest and I don't like to send messages I have no message for the world so I don't need the I don't need uh cell telephones but Echo does have a passion for books he has thirty thousand in his personal collection is it true that your collection in Milan got so big that the walls of your apartment collapsed no more than twice and so what doesn't fit in his apartment fills a wing in the Montage house echo's Own latest book is a scholarly Treatise that examines how we know what we know this is a hardcore book it's not a page Turner you have to stay upon every page for two weeks with your your pregnancy in other words don't buy it if you are not Einstein okay Echo wonders what the philosopher Emmanuel Kant might have said if he had lived to see a duck-billed platypus a platypus challenges every theory about about our way of categorizing of uh naming of classifying uh animals Echo himself can be hard to classify philosopher occasional crime novelist he even plays the recorder [Music] recorded as a quality that everybody can learn it and play it in two weeks but he's also learned the recorder can be a sensitive instrument you can detect on the morning if the day after you smoked too much or you're drunk too much it's enough like that or whiskey and your fingers are not so nimble and whatever piece he sought here in the aponines echo says he is lost without at least three things to do at 67 the professor is still an omnivorous Predator restlessly stalking the Stalls of knowledge back and forth across cultures and history so this is the inner sanctum yes this is the Sanctum I'm sanctimonism right now you are not on a computer don't know how to do it not to worry with his trusty typewriter and stacks of handwritten notes like the ones you can see in his New York office Neil Simon has produced some 30 plays and just as many screenplays creating some classic moments in American Comedy who could forget his bickering Odd Couple with Jack Lemmon as Felix and Walter Matthau as Oscar listen you want to talk to me buddy put down that spoon yes that is like you see things that happen in everyday life and you see the humor in them I think I do I find it easier to write in the uh in the way most of us talk it just comes easier to me and more realistic and Neil Simon's unique take on life just this month earned him one of the nation's top comedy awards to say that that Neil is special would be an understatement old friends like Robert Redford came to pay tribute what do you like about him as a human being I think because he can so Target the heart using humor he can so Target the heart of issues and concerns we all have see you tonight hey and Redford should know he got his first Big Break playing Jane Fonda's button-downed husband in Simon's Barefoot in the Park was that a kiss cause boy if that's what kisses are going to be like from now on don't bother to come back at 5 30. Corey I can't kiss you anymore my lips are numb now will you please go inside where did Simon get his sense of humor were you the kid in class who would always pipe up with a joke I was the quietest person I didn't know I could talk till I was 31. so I don't know where it all came from actually it came from the Bronx where Marvin Neil Simon was born in 1927. he never liked Marvin and his brother Danny called him doc a nickname that stuck four years it was a difficult childhood the family struggled to make ends meet do you think your humor was in a way a response to the tough times well it explained things to me anyway it made it easier to deal with if you were able to laugh at it over the years Simon often used his own experiences for Comic material so who's this handsome young fellow um it used to be me and you're in uniform and yes the Army Air Force it was my fifth day in the Army and so far I hated everyone his stint in the service for example led to Biloxi Blues starring Matthew Broderick [Laughter] it was hard to believe that these guys had mothers and fathers who were worried about them in real life after a stint writing for what was then called the Army Air Force newspaper Neil joined his brother Danny writing gags for TV especially Sid Caesar's your show of shows and then I'm working with Max sleepman and said Caesar and Mel Brooks and Larry Gilbert one of the best comedy writers in America and I said how did we fall into this and I learned a lot and by the time three or four years when I got out I felt I was ready to write a play but what do you think gave you the courage to do it it wasn't courage it was stupidity you just have to be it's you know so dumb and say just do it maybe it'll work out the play was Come Blow Your Horn later made into a film starring Frank Sinatra as a swinging Bachelor bye higher baby if my math is right you are about 34 years old I was never 34 years old when you wrote that play um huge hit on Broadway what did that feel like to have a hit your first time out well it doesn't feel like anything because you don't know what to feel you had to really move on and do something better than that so he did with play after playing even trying his hand at musicals like sweet charity he was the toast of Broadway at one point he had four plays running at the same time he made the covers of time and Newsweek everything was so great you had two beautiful daughters but everything changed in 1973 when your wife Joan died from cancer he'd been married for 19 years so how hard was that was the hardest thing I think in my life Simon's solution to throw himself into his work which was good news for actors like Richard Dreyfuss he knew I could do things that I didn't know I could do and it was the greatest way of starting a career because it was the greatest writer in America listening to what I specifically do and it it's the most important moment I've ever had the moment was the Goodbye Girl all your life is one an Academy Award playing a struggling actor forced into sharing a tiny apartment with Marsha Mason and now if you will move your shapely little Fanny out of my room I will unpack and dry my beard Miss McFadden you forgot to say goodnight I was working on goodbye Marsha Mason was not just any actress she was Neil Simon's second wife he was also married to actress Diane Lander and now for the past seven years to another actress Elaine Joyce I opened the door and he said hi just like that and we went on a first date yeah he came over and and it's like you know that's it she's become his biggest fan when they named the theater after him they should name the city after him you know he's just giving people so much happiness [Music] at 79 still running and in good health after a 2004 kidney transplant Simon Says much of his happiness comes from making people laugh and occasionally his characters give us insight into how he does it in the sunshine boys the Walter Matthau character says I've been in this business 57 years I know a few things you know what makes an audience laugh you know which ways are funny and which ways are not funny words that are funny have a k sound in it Tomatoes is not funny lettuce is not funny you've explained that to me since I was five look I've got to get back to the other cucumbers funny cucumber is funny but lettuce is not funny that's true cucumber is funnier than lettuce am I right yes and the Mark Twain Prize is just the latest in this series of awards he's earned for getting it just right I really came out here for water and to go to the bathroom one of them is not going to happen if that the Kennedy Center Honors The Comedy Award now I can't even read all of them well my wife makes most of themselves yeah don't trust them he's got three Tonys a slew of Academy Award and Emmy nominations and the Pulitzer Prize for lost in Yonkers one of his more serious plays and what resonates in all of Neil Simon's work Sirius or comic is that it seems to speak to all of us many times I would go to the theater and stand in the back and people would come up and they'd say how do you know my father how do you know my cousin I seem to touch that aspect of their lives that's familiar with them as familiar with me do you like it that you have the ability to make us laugh oh sure I mean making a connection with millions of people is pretty good I take that I'll give you the names in Bangor Maine mythical Lumberjack Paul Bunyan still commands pride of place but the top tourist attraction is a stately old Victorian guarded by a wrought iron fence adorned with bats we're all big fans of Stephen King Ruth Whitted and her family drove all the way from Ohio to see it once you start you can't put the book down it's beautiful Glenn allers rode up from New York City to pay homage certainly the way that he paints Bangor in it it's a masterpiece aren't you going to say hello in the chilling 1980s best seller it evil taking the form of a clown Pennywise is stalking children at the end of my street was the storm drain where Georgie meets Pennywise when Steve bought this house but today James Tinker guides tours of King's world he writes in a way where we can understand the characters understand that we're like them and also can see how things can go in a pretty terrible way sometimes was it my imagination on Apple TV Julianne Moore stars in lisi's story The Grieving Widow of a popular author of horror fiction talk to me I have visions I write them down and people pay to read them King wrote the teleplay based on his 2006 bestseller a world of dark imagination sometimes beautiful often terrifying and my introduction to King's world I scare easily I don't relish it you're not a roller coaster girl no sir me either you're not no no you see the thing is I build the roller coasters that doesn't mean I have to ride on it and he's built a lot of them your output is like the score of a professional basketball game leaving aside the stories movie adaptations and teleplays he's written some 80 novels to this year still at 73 King claims the words don't come like they used to you force yourself to get going one sentence two sentences three and little by little you enter that other world you write every day yeah which includes today yeah you wrote today I did I'm glad we didn't interrupt we're in the cycle are you of book production well I I finished a novel and uh I am letting it marinate a little bit you have to get away from it a little while it's too easy if you finish something and go right back into it to either say this is terrible or what's even worse to say my I really wrote a good job this is great I probably wouldn't have Pulitzer Prize for this so when you let the book marinate you don't take a rest sometimes I do but it's not a happy rest because my wife will say get upstairs do something get out of my way you know because I wander around the house like a like a lost thing Tabitha King is also a respected novelist they've been married for 50 years I love my wife like crazy and I always have going back to the beginning she's my equal in many ways and my Superior in many other ways so I love her I depend on her and those things all played a part in the book or a is not modeled on their marriage but 20 some years ago Tabitha was nearly widowed when he was struck by a minivan while out for a walk your wife Tabitha almost lost you in that accident she almost lost you again to pneumonia I wanted to write a little bit about grief and about the longing and the missing a partner and you're right I did almost die and she did almost lose me I'm always touchy about going into the similarities because lisi's story is a fiction but also because marriage is a secret and it has to stay that way there's a public life and then there's your real life writing has made Stephen King both really famous and phenomenally rich but he grew up poor your mother was a single mom her life was hard and harsh but you were blessed with a mother who noticed you were special and gave you at the age of 12 a typewriter my mother gave me room to be what I wanted to be uh she didn't laugh about the ambition to write stories Nelly Ruth Pillsbury King died at age 60 of cancer but lived to see his first book Carrie the hardcover Advance was small but the paperback Advanced just bowled us over it was like four hundred thousand dollars in 1974 it was a huge amount of money and uh my brother and I talked a little bit about it and we went to the Pineland facility where she worked she was in her green uniform green rayon uniform never told this story before but she was stoned totally stoned on over-the-counter medication she was in excruciating pain by that point and uh my brother and I we said mom you're done there's enough to take care of you now because the book sold for a lot of money and you can go home and she just put her hands over her face and cried his father a merchant Seaman skipped out when Stephen was only two he has no memory of him but he left that box a box in the Attic that would change his life there were like cocktail napkins from Tokyo little hula hula dolls from somewhere in the South Pacific there were those things but there was also an H.P Lovecraft book and it showed this horrible green monster rising from a broken open grave in a graveyard and I thought this is it you know whatever it is something chimes in you and you say I found something that resonates with my soul do you know um most of us don't ever find that thing I don't know if that's true no I know that is true to be fortunate enough to find the thing that you love spark and be good at it and the world wants you to do as much of it as you possibly can that's the trifecta and that is so rare one of the things that I've tried to do is to keep my imagination young and keeping that spark alive decade after decade that may be the secret [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 135,246

Keywords: writers, stephen king, louise penny, anne rice, neil simon, umberto eco, novelists, playwrights

Id: DcAgm9qy3sQ

Length: 42min 3sec (2523 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023