Today, Norm Goldman Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is excited to have as our guest, Fletcher Rhoden author of Last Tango With Marlon and The Trial of Davy Crockett.

Good day Fletcher and thanks for participating in our interview.

Norm:

I notice that you wear and have worn many hats pertaining to a variety of careers. Please briefly tell our readers something about yourself and your various careers. As a follow up, which one has been the most satisfying?

Fletcher:

There is a lot of diversity in my body of work, Norm. In addition to being an author and playwright, I am a solo-exhibition painter, (Fletcher Rhoden Sleeps With The Fishes), short subject writer/director (The Christopher Walken Ecstatic Dance Academy) and animator (Rabbit In The Moon, Balloonzee). But a lot of these things have been relegated to the status of hobby, I think. And they’re very fulfilling; I love to paint and I don’t get to do it as much as I used to. I just did a little parody of Jurassic Fight Club called Jurassic Fart Club, just for a goof. It inspired the animators on that show to send me an email praising my short. It’s amazing what you can do with a Mac and Final Cut and all those new software programs. Pro Tools, Maxon-4D, I use a lot of ‘em. But when I think of my career, I think of the novellas, the plays, the films.

As for which are most satisfying, this is a more complicated question. It’s like asking which of your kids you love the most. But writing even the best script (and I just wrote a whopper with my new partner, Jeanell Suggs) can only be so satisfying, because it’s an incomplete object. A script is a part of a film, and without the film you’ve only got a spare part, basically. It’s a crucial part, but just a part. Even a play can be an evolving thing, incomplete in its way.

When we premiered the stage play of Last Tango With Marlon, we used a bare set in a small theater, the lighting wasn’t ideal, certain things were left out for various technical reasons. It could certainly be done again with superior sets and lights, with material reinserted which had been edited out for the first run and so forth.

But the novellas are finished, they are completed. Every word will stay where it is, there’s no more to add or redo. One can always change the cover, or add reviews or even correct the odd mistake that sneaks through on subsequent runs, but there’s still a level of completion there that’s unmatched in screenwriting. And when a novella is praised, that’s a satisfaction, that’s a redemption, which is hard to beat. I am a produced film writer, and that first finished feature (Stump The Band, Boathouse Studios) was pretty satisfying. I only wrote the story, really, so it was harder to take as much satisfaction than if I’d written the actual script. Still, it was a pretty great feeling to see my name up on the screen.

Norm:

How did you get started in writing? What keeps you going?

Fletcher:

I spent most of my youth writing songs and playing guitar, and by the time I reached my late twenties I was just kind of sick of it. It was not providing the kind of satisfaction I’d hoped, in the face of the kind of difficulty it presented. And I was looking for other ways to express myself. I was painting, then publishing comic books, and that led me to try my hand at my first novel. I fell in love with writing in my twenties the same way I fell in love with music in my teens -- which I suppose is both what got me started and what keeps me going.

Norm:

Your recent book, Last Tango With Marlon is a novella. Why have you been drawn to the novella? As a follow up, are there aesthetic advantages and disadvantages peculiar to the novella? Does it even have a form?

Fletcher:

Excellent question, Norm. I’ve been thinking about this very subject for a new online article (another new hobby). Is the novella this generation’s novel? The reason I chose the novella for Last Tango With Marlon and The Trial Of Davy Crockett, both of which I also wrote as stage plays, is that the particulars of each story dictated that choice.

Having written in a lot of genres and formats, I have always felt that the story dictates the medium; in other words, form follows function. Some stories just lend themselves to novels and screenplays; they’re perfect three-acts, they’d look great on the screen.

Benchley’s Jaws or Blatty’s The Exorcist are great examples. Other stories just lend themselves to the stage, which is why Mamet’s Glengary Glenn Ross was a play first, and it also happened to work on the screen. The idea of two men in an extended dialogue, which is basically how both Last Tango With Marlon and The Trial Of Davy Crockett are structured, just lent itself to the stage and to the published word. This brings us to the novella, and what it is exactly.

The novella seems to have kind of a nebulous definition. A novel has a main plot, usually several subplots of various importance, subsequently more characters and often takes place over extended periods of time.

Puzo’s The Godfather is a fine example of the modern novel in this way. I think of the novella as having only a main plot and no subplots, and taking place over a limited period of time.

Marquez’ Chronicle Of A Death Foretold is an excellent example. So for stories like Last Tango With Marlon or The Trial Of Davy Crockett, both of which take place in real time and feature no real subplots or additional characters who act independently of the main action, their form dictated that they’d be better novellas than novels.

As for the disadvantages or advantages of each, I’m tempted to say that the novel faces new challenges in this fast-paced society. I think fewer and fewer of them are sold and/or published, it shows signs of being an outmoded form.

The novella is quicker, more tailored to the modern sensibility of faster-is-better that so looms over our modern world. Of course, one risks losing the lived-in feeling one gets spending weeks or even months reading a book, that sense of immersion.

On the other hand, the novella is a great way to inform, more so than the novel because there’s only one thread of action. For example, The Trial Of Davy Crockett is more than just a dramatic exchange between Davy Crockett and Santa Anna after the fall of the Alamo, it is a dissertation on the facts leading up to the Texian Revolution, including the lives and careers of both men directly involved and also of peripheral characters. Basically, everything you need to know about this conflict is spelled out in a dramatic form.

The same is true with Last Tango With Marlon, in addition to a sprightly read and amusing exchange, you get a full biography of Brando and of Wally Cox, plus a comprehensive satire of the social and political climates of the 1970’s and the current day, and all in just 76 pages. It’s harder to get all this across in a novel because changing of scenes, other characters and subplots coming and going dilute the message. Of course, in a novel a message may not be what you’re after (or in a novella either), but if you’re trying to make a point, the novella may have the sharper cutting edge.

Norm:  

Please briefly tell our readers something about Last Tango With Marlon?

Fletcher:

In 1974, Marlon Brando is at a flash point in his life. He’s finally made it back to the top with his turns in The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris. But his personal life and his psyche are falling apart, his delusions about his place in the world are crumbling around him. So, as was his practice, Brando conjures a dialogue with best friend Wally Cox, who died the year before and whose ashes remain one of Brando’s closest confidants.

With Wally as his devil’s advocate, Brando struggles to work through the demons in his life which have set him on a self-destructive path and which threaten the lives of his children as well. In the exchange, Brando and Cox trade memories and mind games, doing bits, singing songs, role playing the way they did as kids and, famously, as adults. There’s a lot of comedy and a lot of social commentary and, since it was also a stage play, it moves with a lot of drama.

Norm:

What do you want your work to do? Amuse people? Provoke thinking?

Fletcher:

I do want to amuse people, definitely. Last Tango With Marlon has a lot of comedy, as I said; if it doesn’t amuse, I failed. Also, nobody wants social commentary without first being amused. Without that, no message comes across, nothing is accomplished.

Beyond that, I do think the written word more than other forms should do more than merely amuse. It’s okay if your average romantic comedy or teen comedy comes and goes without making any kind of real point. But in a novel, when people are investing themselves and their time, that requires a bigger payoff, that deserves something more than merely to be amusing.

I think people go to see plays with a higher intellectual expectation than they do movies, as well. But I don’t mean to degrade movies, which can resonate far beyond their immediate entertainment value; Casablanca or King Of Comedy, for example.

More often that not, though, in movies, the resonance is the first thing to go because there’s so much more at stake economically in creating a movie than in creating a novel, and the novelist knows he has more time to deliver his message than the filmmaker does. This fact isn’t lost on the filmmaker either.

With my own work, I did have aspirations beyond merely to entertain. Last Tango With Marlon is more than the story of these two men and the particulars of their relationship; it’s about all of us and the relationships in our own lives.

Brando was trapped in a cycle of abuse; of himself and of others. I believe we all have relationships in our lives that follow this pattern, sometimes we ourselves are the abusive ones without realizing. But often what we cannot see in ourselves we can almost always see in others.

Brando thinks of himself as an intellectual, a humanitarian, effete, cultured. But in fact he’s revealed to be a brute, a thug, an unreasonable man for whom violence is the ultimate solution. And most of Brando’s life experience bares this out. However, I also drew heavily on at least one particular relationship in my life to write Last Tango With Marlon, with a close friend whose constant abuse destroyed our friendship.

My hope is that reading this book will inspire others who are in similar relationships; from the abusive end, to recognize the transgressions and maybe curb their behavior, and for those who are abused to identify the pattern and to remove themselves from it.

I was also hoping to make a point about the passing down of these cycles of behavior.

We all become our parents, it is often said, but what most people forget is the second half of that equation; that our kids become us. So there is always more at stake at every turn for parents because in many ways they must take responsibility for the lives of their children and can only do that by taking more responsibility for their own lives.

With The Trial Of Davy Crockett I had similar goals. Growing up in Southern California, I have been exposed to the rampant racial tension between whites and Latinos. I trace a lot of this racial tension to the Alamo, where in American schools we were taught that these few brave caucasians stood against the evil Mexicans and fought for liberty.

Whatever your take on the Alamo, this simplistic (and historically inaccurate) view made a grave impression on our minds for many years. My hope was to present the Mexican government’s point of view and let the matter be heard fairly. The book makes no judgments for or against, but encourages the reader to decide after hearing all the facts. I hoped that information would defeat ignorance and, thus, racism itself might be reduced at least in some small part.

Norm:

What's the most difficult thing for you about being a writer?

Fletcher:

For me, the hardest thing has been breaking through. There’s just so much clatter in the world today, it’s hard to be heard. Another difficult thing about being a writer for me has been stopping.

 I’ve tried several times to focus on marketing my writing more, even promising myself I wouldn’t write anything new. For the past five years, everything I’ve written has been the last thing. Then an idea comes or an opportunity pops up to collaborate, and I just can’t say no.

After all this time, it’s become ingrained into who I am. It’s like with the song writing; I did it so single-mindedly for so long, it’s just become an instinct. I try to limit it, because I definitely see it as an indulgence, and there’s so much for me to do with writing and marketing my work and so forth. But I just can’t seem to stop, so every now and then I have to pull out the guitars and do some recording, just to clear them out of my head.

The irony is, new songs come along to fill the empty space and the whole cycle just keeps continuing. If I could stop, I probably would. I guess I feel the same way about the prose and the scripts; I just can’t help myself. I feel like George C. Scott in Patton: “God help me, how I do love it so.”  

Norm:  

What do you think of the new Internet market for writers?

Fletcher:

I think it’s great. The internet has brought democracy back to the world marketplace.

For so many years you could only get what buyers and manufacturers wanted to make available to you. Now you can get almost anything which exists anywhere in the world over the internet. Thirty years ago, if bookstores didn’t want to carry

The Trial Of Davy Crockett, you wouldn’t be able to get it. Period. Now you can always get a copy, no matter how poorly it sells or how competitive the marketplace is.

Now every voice can be heard; one person, one voice, free of corporate tyranny. That’s the kind of equality democracy promises. The internet brings the same sense of democracy to journalism and the dissemination of information. If you think what you’re getting from the big TV and cable news outlets is fair and truthful, take a second look at outlets that aren’t owned by huge corporations. You’ll only find them on the internet.

But getting back to commerce; in thirty years, will people still have brick-and-mortar outlets or will everything be sold online? With rising real estate costs and shrinking internet costs, who can doubt where the future is? Even the fact that we now use the phrase brick-and-mortar tells us how important online commerce has already become. I’m just glad I get to participate in it.

Norm:

What has been your experience with self-publishing?

Fletcher:

Honestly, it’s been mixed. There’s a big emphasis on self-promoting, and that’s what I enjoy least about what I do. But without a big publisher, you lack the publicity machine.

Actually, a lot of authors published by the big houses don’t get the publicity machine behind them, but in self-publishing the author feels the pressure all the more, because the author is also the publisher. It’s great for other reasons, though; more control, much shorter lag time between writing and publishing, higher royalties. I think self-publishing has lost the stigma it had even twenty years ago, when vanity press was still a term being used. I think it’s still a company, but its use as a generic term of derision seems to have fallen away. A lot more people do it and have success with it.

And as publishers have cut back and fallen away and refined their submission requirements, the average writer just has less choice than to self-publish. And with POD (Publish On Demand) one invests less, because bigger and potentially wasteful runs are not required. And anyway, isn’t self-publishing the truly American way, to forge one’s own path, to avoid the established way of doing things. Wouldn’t a natural part of being a self-made person be self-publishing?

Norm:

In fiction as well as in nonfiction, writers very often take liberties with their material to tell a good story or make a point. But how much is too much?

Fletcher:

That’s another great question, Norm. I assume you’re talking about fact-based fiction; pure fiction takes fewer liberties, as it relies less on actual fact. However there’s always a certain amount of factuality in any fiction, and it’s an important part.

Research is key, because falsehood rings out in the reader’s mind. If a certain plot point requires a certain piece of technology, let that technology actually exist. If you invent something that is implausible or worse, use technology in a period piece before that technology was invented, you volunteer the truth of your story and you’ll be found out. In fact-based fiction one has to be even more diligent about research. If records put someone in a certain place at a certain time, you’re well served to stick to the facts.

The more wild the liberty, the more egregious. In fiction, truth is ultimate. Certain liberties can be taken, ofcourse. In The Trial Of Davy Crockett, Santa Anna speaks to Crockett in English, but there is no record that he had mastered that language to the extent to which he does in the book.

But there was just no graceful way of having these men speak expect in a shared language, and the odds where much greater that Santa Anna would have learned English than Davy Crockett would have learned Spanish. In any case, I wrote it for English-speaking audiences (it’s the only language I speak). But this seems to be a fairly common conceit in writing, to have everybody speak in English. And actually the whole thing is one big liberty, since Crockett and Santa Anna had no such conversation after the fall of the Alamo.

But Crockett is believed to have been captured alive and executed, another truth that was crucial to my story. Beyond that, I stuck to the facts. Same with Last Tango With Marlon; everything in it is true or based in truth, down to the relationship Brando had with his ex-wife, his collaborators and so on. In fact, much of both books are inspired by the actual published writings of the men involved.

Norm:

What do you see as the influences on your writing?

Fletcher:

If by that you mean who, my favorite writers are Peter Ustinov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For keenness of insight, grace of prose and quality of purpose, these men are superb. If by that you mean WHAT inspired me, I’d have to (mis)quote Lenny Bruce: I’m inspired by every waking moment.

Norm:

Do you feel that writers, regardless of genre owe something to readers, if not, why not, if so, why and what would that be?

Fletcher:

I think I may have inadvertently answered this one already, but I’ll try to extrapolate. I think writers do owe readers because of the extra energy and commitment the reader gives to a longer form like the novel or even the novella. They want more and they should have it. A good novel, for example, should convey new information to the reader.

In a period piece, various details and facts will come across which enlighten the reader, take them to an exotic world and teach them about what it is to live in this alien environment. There should also be some commentary, so that all this amusement and factuality can be in the service of something. Otherwise, to go from Lenny Bruce to another great humorist, Homer Simpson; you take forever to say nothing.

Norm:

Has a review or profile ever changed your perspective on your work?

Fletcher:

Not really, certainly not the positive ones! The only negative reviews I’ve ever had are for the animated and live-action shorts, and I don’t pay too much attention to that.

They’re just hobbies, after all. And some of those youtube people, they really throw the hostility around. Often it’s kind of amusing, but never life-changing.

Norm:

Where can our readers find out more about Fletcher Rhoden?

Fletcher:

My books are available from Trafford publishing: Last Tango With Marlon: www.trafford.com/07-2958 The Trial Of Davy Crockett: www.trafford.com/01-0132

My paintings, shorts, book excerpts, music, videos and other cool stuff can be found on the various pages of my home site: www.fletcherrhoden.com

Norm:

What is next for Fletcher Rhoden and is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered?

Fletcher:

I’m currently promoting Last Tango With Marlon, hoping to book as many readings, signings, and personal appearances/interviews as I can. I also have a seminar, Write Makes Might: Stronger Structure in Storytelling, a multimedia analysis of the 3-act structure as well as scene and sequel structure, using popular and classic films to illustrate. I’m currently booking the 1-hour presentation (including Q&A and signings) at colleges across the country. Info on booking readings/signings and on booking the seminar can be found at the relevant pages of my home site.

 I’m also writing a second script with my new writing partner Jeanell and her best friend Gladys Tamez, and keeping an eye on several scripts I’ve got floating around the marketplace. Interested parties should contact Lew Weitzman at Preferred Artists, 818-990-2323.

I think you’ve covered just about everything else with this insightful and well-considered series of questions.

Norm:

Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Fletcher: More than my pleasure, Norm. Thanks for having me.