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.
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.
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