Reviewing the Reel with Tara Ison

One may have gotten to know Professor Ison through the classroom setting where she gives snippets of her life and her love for film, or maybe are familiar with her work. Maybe you have never met her, and are wondering who is she? If one wanted to look at her life and/or discuss film a bit more in depth, her book Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies will be enough to not only look at the impact of film on Professor Ison, but it will also have one reflecting how film has factored in on their own critical moments in life. Just recently, Tara received the news that her book won 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. So Marooned sat down with Tara to get not only what it takes to write an award-winning, hybrid of memoir/film analysis, but also what such a process can do for the author along with some tidbits on her movie-going experiences.

Marooned: So I have some preliminary thoughts I’d like to share, and let’s see where that takes us.

Tara: First thing I want to say is thank you for doing this.

M:     Thank you for having me. Now when reading the book I had felt that the events and how they coincided with a certain movie were so connected at the right moment that it was almost surreal to read through. When looking back at this feeling I realized this does happen and we don’t realize it at the time. 

T:      That was really part of the process of writing the book. It was trying to find both specific moments from films and specific moments from life that spoke to each other and connected to each other in some way. And there might have been a significant moment in my life, but I couldn’t find the cinematic influence or experience so I didn’t talk about it. There were a lot of movies or other scenes from films that meant a great deal to me, but if I couldn’t find the life experience that it informed or influenced then I left it out. I was really trying to focus on what you’re describing that almost surreal moment when the two connect.      

   

M:        Awesome. You explained in the beginning that you are what is called a cinephile, so being an avid moviegoer are you more a fan of at-home screenings of movies or watching them at theaters?

T:         Each is such a different experience. I do feel like we are losing something of the experience of movie-going by not sitting in a theater and watching it. Some films are just meant to be on that scale, that larger-than-life scale, where you are sitting in the darkened room and you are completely immersed. All of your sensual faculties are focused on that larger-than life screen, and when you shrink things down you lose something of that. I had to watch so many of these films on my iPad or television because obviously they’re not showing at the movies anymore.

M: Right.

T: Even as I try to focus, I am in my living room, I think about the laundry, “Oh I am just going to stop for a moment and put in a load of laundry” or “I am going to stop for a minute and make some popcorn”. It didn’t have the kind of immersion that it did when I initially saw these films, and we’ve gone from these images and these figures literally being larger-than-life to being shrunk down to you know, a seven by nine screen or six by eight screen, or whatever it is.

M: Or whatever the size of an iPhone screen is now.

T: Yes. It shrinks it down, and I think something is lost in that translation. Then again the same thing can be said about sitting in a theater. There is a huge difference between how people behave in a movie-theater now and how they did when I was a kid. There was a greater respect for the shared experience. It was more like being in church, and we are there to share in this experience with a mindfulness of what we are here to be doing which is to lose ourselves in these images, these characters, these stories. Today whether it may be people checking their iPhone, or talking to each other! There is an indifference to the immersive power and potential of film, and that breaks my heart a little bit.

M: The is the result of new, shiny phone models, and as for the talking I feel as if they take a moment in that hush to realize “Hey there’s a human being I like next to me that I can talk to in person!”

T: But you’re not supposed to be talking! (Laughs)

M: It’s true, and it’s also just people not thinking before they act as well as not respecting that etiquette you mentioned anymore.

T: And meanwhile the person sitting next to you has spent fifteen dollars to sit there and watch the film they can’t hear because you’re busy talking. It blows my mind sometimes.

M: So as a movie-goer have you ever attended these act-alongs that sometimes occur at theaters? Like for Rocky Horror Picture Show?

T: Yes, I did Rocky Horror. I been to Sound of Music. I’ve been to Fiddler on the Roof. They actually did a version of this for the movie that I wrote a million years ago called Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead. There was a night in Los Angeles where they did a, um, pop-up video version of Don’t Tell Mom. They encourage people to quote along with the dialogue, and people were dressed up. It was a sort of interactive thing. They were popping up bits of trivia on the screen. That was a lot of fun. I know it’s really cheesy and really corny, and I love that kind of thing.

M: Loving movies as much as you do however, you have encountered people who are not devoted to it at all despite its prevalence in our culture. In your introduction the anecdote of your friend with the country estate and secret home theater that her children never knew about. It touched on the idea of films being a potential form of escapism and that it may take away from living moments her children could experience. Did she ever amend her philosophy?

T: She did as they got older, but she wanted them to first experience authentic moments before they eventually end up choosing to watch films or television. If she allowed them to choose that later in life is so that they can be a part of the conversation especially now that they had a foundation from which they can distinguish between the manufactured and real experience. It still isn’t a big part of their lives because they’re family is not modeled around it. Something that my readers have noticed as well is how young I was when I watched most of these movies I wrote about. Part of me acknowledges the fact I was too young, but I am grateful for my parents permissiveness and inclusion.

M: I was curious about the selection of films and categories of life, and how they were organized. Did you have a certain set-up for the audience to follow?

T: Not really. Each essay has a very different structure, but at the same time I think that I wanted structurally to keep the focus on those moments of connection between life experience and film experience. I would sort of veer back and forth between the two of them, but I would find that if I was spending too long in the film world I would sort of reign myself in. I would say “Ok , but how is this relevant to life experience or to my own personal experience?” and I would try to bring it back to the memoir aspect of the book. Similarly if I felt like I was spending too much time talking about myself, if I was spending too long in the memoir world, I kept wanting to bring it back to film. So I felt like I had film on one side and life experience on the other, and it was like driving down a path and not wanting to hit either side. I just wanted to keep a nice steady middle path between the two of them. If that makes sense.

M: It does make sense. There is so much to talk about in both one’s life and about film because they both have so many complex components that go into it. It would be difficult not to stop in one side and try to explain it in full detail.

T: Sometimes there were the films that narrative arc of the film was important, and really with some films it is just one moment, one line of dialogue, one expression on a character’s face that I talk about, but with other films it really is the overall narrative arc of the story that had influenced me. When that was the case I allowed the narrative structure of the film to determine the structure of the essay. Then other moments it was the life experience that I went through that structured the essay, and within that I would drop in briefer moments of a variety of films that seasoned the life experience. So that’s what I meant by each essay is structured a little bit differently because I did want it to be organic. Is the emphasis here really on the film and how it affected some moments of perception or consciousness in my life, or is the focus here really on what was going on in my life and how these little moments of film illuminated it.

M: It’s so much different when you look back on how you saw it as a child, and then you reflect back on it as an adult. Sitting down and really thinking back on it really does put perspective on what you experienced in that moment.

T: I wanted to include that perspective. I wanted to capture the immediacy of the first time experience of watching the film, and the immediacy of what I was thinking, feeling, seeing, perceiving at that moment. I also wanted to layer in a later consciousness, an adult perspective, in order to find the difference between the adolescent moment and the adult reflection. I definitely wanted to have a sort of present-day, slightly older, maybe slightly wiser, perspective layered in.

M: Where there moments when it was difficult to write this book?

T: There were the personal intimate moments where there was nothing to hide behind that were difficult to face at times. The largest challenges however were more technical. It was mainly in how to balance the analysis and the memories, and then finding the way they illuminated each other.

M: Is there a genre of film or category of film that you wish you had included in your book?

T: There were other themes I wished I could have included, but during the process the question or the moment of discovery that I was looking for did not occur. The same happened with the films that I love, but I just couldn’t find what I was trying to accomplish with this book. I did think of more themes after publishing that I might write a few more essays on.

M: Please let us know when that happens! So what would you advise our readers do if they fall into the habit of taking too much from their personal experiences when writing a fictional story compared to creative non-fiction? Or is there no such thing as too much when it comes to writing from experience?

T: The caution would be something I tell my students. It’s fine, but a phrase I hear a lot is “oh but it really happened” and that has no relationship to the success of a story. The truth can often times be boring, flat, or too close to the writer. Don’t take too much from it unless you are being mindful of how well it works in the story. Also being aware of the ethics of writing from experience, and who from your experience is being included, what is exposed, is important because then it becomes less about a line of inquiry and more about what has already been answered.

Tara Ison is the author of the novels A Child out of Alcatraz, The List, and Rockaway, the short story collection Ball, and the essay collection Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies. She is also the co-writer of the cult classic film Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead. Ison is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

A Library Without Books: Remodeling Hayden for Students of the Future

By Kelly deVos

On the far side of the fifth floor of Hayden Library, behind a nondescript breakroom door lies the office of the late, great, Carl Hayden, perfectly preserved in all in its 1960’s-era glory. Going inside is like traveling through time. The room has mid-century modern furniture, the senator’s old red leather chair and even a birthday card signed by President Lyndon Johnson. It’s not really much of a surprise that Senator Hayden had an office in the library. He was an ASU graduate in the early days of the university, back when it was still called Tempe Normal School, and the building is named after his father, Tempe founder Trumbull Hayden.

What’s surprising is that, 44 years after Hayden’s death, his office is being kept in a condition that suggests he might walk through the door at any moment. The space is also largely off-limits to students and faculty. For some people, this is a metaphor for the library itself. It’s a grand old building chocked full of out-of-date stacks and oddball oddities of little use to the student population.

ASU plans to begin extensive renovations of the 1966, Pavilion-style structure in 2017. Led by university librarian James J. O’Donnell, a polarizing pioneer of digital technology, some of the plans, like connecting the Memorial Union to Hayden, are innocuous and have clear benefits.

But O’Donnell also intends to get rid of the library’s books.

More specifically, he intends to transfer most of Hayden Library’s physical books to Mesa’s Polytechnic campus. Students who want access to hard copy books can make requests via a delivery system that will transfer them to any one of ASU’s libraries for pick up. Technically, the books will be available, but it’s clear that O’Donnell’s library of the future is a digital one, where most access will be via computer. The vision of Hayden he expressed to the State Press last November is something out of a futuristic film with oversized video screens, large format printers, and floor after floor of research space.

This will be the library of the future for students of the future. But will they thank O’Donnell for it?

Unlike e-books, which have become prominent largely during the past decade, printed volumes have been the mainstay of university libraries since the 15^th century invention of the printing press. There have been few studies that establish what the transition to digital books means for higher education. It’s also unclear whether or not young people actually like e-books. A 2014 study by The Guardian found that a majority of tweens and teens preferred print books. It’s anybody’s guess whether these kids will arrive at Arizona State and be pleased to find a library that looks like an Apple Store.

For a variety of reasons, the pressure is on for universities to globalize and digitize. But this is still Arizona State University, built and funded in large measure by the citizens of this state over the school’s 100-plus year tenure. At least some part of the mandate of Hayden Library must be to preserve the legacy of Arizona and to acknowledge its history. This mission is especially critical when you consider the small percentage of state natives relative to the overall population. In that context, Carl Hayden’s office on the fifth floor seems important and maybe a bit apropos. This is, after all, a man whose Central Arizona Project made possible the transformation of Phoenix from a small town into the nation’s fifth largest city. Yet, out on Orange or Cady Malls, few students know about the senator or his accomplishments.

This feels like the biggest limitation of a predominantly digital library – people don’t know what they don’t know. During my time as a student, I’ve passed a number of exhibits curated by the librarians of Hayden, including one called “Weird and Wonderful Government Documents,” and have come across some very strange books, like one titled Explaining the Obious. I doubt I would have sought any of this material out had I not found it in passing. Effectively simulating this process of learning through interaction with elements of the physical world has proved elusive for digital designers. And what if, ultimately, it just won’t work for the same reason that seeing a photograph of Picasso’s Guernica isn’t the same as seeing Guernica?

There’s no denying that the stacks at Hayden are sometimes deserted. But I find myself wondering about the real root of this issue. Has the library become irrelevant? Or has the university failed to present its importance to students? To me, impressing upon current and future students why libraries have been places of incredible social, cultural and scholastic significance for hundreds of years is more likely to pay off in the long run than digitizing and warehousing books. Furthermore, I worry that, in a zeal to modernize, everything special about Hayden, everything that makes it a unique place in a unique time, will be replaced by the type of material that is available everywhere else.

I hope Hayden keeps the stacks. But what do you think? What’s your library of the future?