Lawrence Grobel - The Art of the Interview: Lessons from a Master of the Craft

PROLOGUE
AN ENCYCLOPEDIC APPROACH

INTRODUCTION
ROBERT MITCHUM, ADOLPH EICHMANN, SEXUAL REPRESSION, AND FINDING ONES VOICE. DONT ASK. OR DO.

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What happens after youve got the assignment? Publicists. Researching and preparing questions. Convincing a subject to sit with you. Changing a reluctant subjects mind. Learning to be patient. Becoming a chameleon and an actor. Behaving differently with different subjects. Be Educated. Be Current. Knowing when to be forceful. Those dumb questions. When an editor wants you, but the subject prefers someone he knows. Bringing the caviar.

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Learning to deal with your nerves. Talking to stars and experts. Getting your subject to open up: Knowing when to delve into a persons fears and anxieties, traumas, and financial affairs. Getting them to trust you. When to be an equal and when not to be. Maintain control. Relying on your personality. Getting beyond the plug: Youve let them promote, now its your turn. Recognizing good copy when you hear it. Zero in on specifics. Going with the unexpected. Burying oneself in chauvinism. The battle of the sexes. Searching ones past for clues. The problem with parents. Parents and their children. Nightmares: When it just isnt working. Asking the tough questions. Avoiding confrontations until the end. Dealing with subjects who treat you badly. Nobel Prize winners. Dont overlook asides. Knowing when enoughs enough.

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Jack Nicholson. Anjelica Huston. Dylan McDermott. Jodie Foster. Harrison Ford. James A. Michener. Norman Mailer. Saul Bellow. Al Pacino. Sharon Stone. Truman Capote. Oliver Stone. Marlon Brando. Robert De Niro.

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Editing raw transcripts. How to start: The Importance of a good beginning. Endings. The meat in between.

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Stephen Randall (Playboy), Peter Bloch (Penthouse), Andrew Essex (Details), Heidi Parker (Movieline/Hollywood Life, Playboy), Barry Golson (TV Guide, Yahoo), Bill Newcott (AARP the Magazine), Janice Min (Us), Will Dana (Rolling Stone).

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Kevin Cook, Claudia Dreifus, Michael Fleming, Kristine McKenna, Steve Pond, David Rensin, Diane Shah, David Sheff.

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APPENDIX 1
DREW BARRYMORE QUESTIONS

APPENDIX 2
ON THE ROAD WITH THE ANGRIEST MAN IN AMERICA

If ever the words matter of fact come to mean anything, they do with a low-key vengeance mean something blunt and to the point in Larry Grobels The Art of the Interview. Which at the least, is a one-hundred-thousand-word definition in depth of the meaning, if it has any, of celebrity and fame. And in summing it all up, it would nearly teach you a lesson: Dont try to be famous, youll regret it. But in spite of such implied advice, theres not in this treatise a recluse to be seen or mentioned anywhere. There are instead even interviews of the interviewers. And you begin to get an idea of when youre famous, what the smart thing is to say in order to stay that way. All communicated by one of the specialists analyzing his subjects inside out, from their youth onward and into the flowering of their careers. Their motives exposed which first ignited them to achieve their notability. Except there is a catch. To be a subject for Larry Grobel to make you in depth more famous, youve already got to be pretty famous.

Now then. As someone who is normally racked with humility, and also just about the worlds worst interviewee, writing this foreword I find myself both puzzled and flattered. But I was, in fact, once actually interviewed by Larry Grobel. The interview being for Newsday and which was never published in that periodical but was to appear later in Larrys book Endangered Species, which gives the best indication of where one might languish today, shovel in hand, knee-deep in my bogs watching my cattle and hoping to God someone might point and say:

Hey, I know who you are.

Ah, but forget all that old sorrowful self-deprecating stuff, which all strikes me as a matter of false self-effacement. One accepts the fact that except in avoiding danger, its a strong human trait not to want to be ignored. Even in writing this Im depending upon someone somewhere having heard of me. So, being best known for being unknown, how have I qualified for the attention of Larry Grobel in the first place. I simply can only conjecture it must have been from his reading one of or all of my novels and helping to contribute to every writers dream, that someone somewhere will open up one of their books and get hooked, to read on. And then tell somebody else he likes to do the same. In any event, one always remained aware that one of the most used expressions in the United States, if not spoken, was then thought and which pervades all conversational confrontation.

What the hell use are you to me.

This remark did not seem to be in effect when Larry Grobel first came intomy ken, now many years ago. Paying me a visit to interview me in the rather large house I livein, isolated out in the midlands of Westmeath. A house, as it happens, whose fame now somewhatrests as much upon the fact that James Joyce was here as that I am here.

And then some years later didnt one day dawn out in these isolated midlands, when you mildly assume that maybe the world does give a good goddamn that you are languishing where you are. And present the occasion when a letter arrived from Hollywood. The place from which all writers want to hear from. Because it can mean the biggest bucks he will ever know in his life. And what they wanted to do was to option the film rights of