Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I think if you research too much ahead of time,

it's going to clog things up.

You find out such interesting things

that you long to put them in.

But quite frequently, they sidetrack the plot.

So you want the details to be accurate,

but you don't want them looking like research.

And by the way, let me tell you about the shoelaces.

And by the way, let me tell you about the shoelaces.

So I like to write first and then research

the details that I've put in to see if I've got them right.

I find that much more helpful than having

a huge stack of research that can bog you down, if you like,

and slow up the actual writing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's important to get those details right,

because if you get them wrong, it

throws off the reader's belief in your story.

I once got a letter from a woman who had read

"Alias Grace," an older women.

She said, that's not how you make butter.

Luckily, I had "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management"

at my side, in which there are about 50 ways of making butter,

at my side, in which there are about 50 ways of making butter,

one of them being the one described.

But if you've got one of those things wrong,

it throws the reader off.

And they get sidetracked.

And believe me, if it's not accurate,

somebody is going to write you a letter--

or these days, do an internet posting that begins, you idiot.

So it's best to check your facts and factoids and even

So it's best to check your facts and factoids and even

such things as when did people start using plastic garbage

bags, what color were the refrigerators in 1960,

when were pantyhose invented.

You may think you know these things.

But you really should go back and double check.

And a wonderful source of information

are old magazines, especially the ads.

You can find out a lot that way.

You can find out a lot that way.

Your goal is to keep your reader believing in your story,

even though both of you know it's fiction

and it says fiction on the outside.

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The internet is your friend mostly,

just as the reference library is your friend mostly.

But just because it's on the internet

or because it's in the reference library doesn't mean it's true.

or because it's in the reference library doesn't mean it's true.

It's always good to cross check and use

more than one reference.

If you're using old magazines with ads in them,

be advised that the ads aren't how people actually lived.

The ads are the advertisers' idea

of how they thought people ought to want to live,

which was a different kind of thing.

But mail order catalogs are pretty good.

But mail order catalogs are pretty good.

That's closer to how people probably really lived

in some areas of their lives--

old diaries, letters, those kinds of things.

Unfortunately, diary writers and letters

never wrote down the most obvious things

that you might want to know because those things were

known by everybody at the time.

So why would you write them down?

Suppose that we're in the future and everyone

has forgotten what a toaster is.

has forgotten what a toaster is.

Nobody will have written down what

it was because everybody knew.

But then they forgot.

So if you are a diary writer or keeping a journal,

do us a favor.

Do the people in the future a favor.

Tell them about some of these ordinary things

that you did every day, and explain what those things were.

They'll thank you for it.

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"Alias Grace" was a major research project

because it was about a real event.

It was about a double murder that took place in 1843.

And nobody quite knew whether the girl involved

in it, Grace Marks, had been an innocent victim

or a fellow perpetrator.

Because within months, the four people

who had been living in that house--

who had been living in that house--

three of them were dead, and she was the only one left.

And she never told.

There was a wealth of material.

But it was contradictory because the case

was highly politicized.

There had just been a failed rebellion

in that part of the world, namely what is now Ontario.

And the political factions took different views.

So the reformers, being mostly Methodist and Presbyterians,

So the reformers, being mostly Methodist and Presbyterians,

took the view that Grace Marks was an innocent victim,

that she had run away to the United States

with this man under threat of death,

and she was a bit simple-minded, and that, of course,

she hadn't been actually a murderer.

The conservative faction took the view

that it was very bad form to kill your employer

and that she was a conniving, devious, manipulative--

and that she was a conniving, devious, manipulative--

fill in the rest--

femme fatale who had enticed the male perpetrator

into doing these murders.

That was their view.

But people could not even agree on what she looked like.

They all agreed that she was good-looking.

But they couldn't agree whether she

was tall or of medium height, what color her hair was,

what color her eyes were.

what color her eyes were.

These were eyewitnesses.

It's a real lesson in the unreliability of eyewitnesses.

And putting together the timeline,

what happened when-- that was difficult as well.

The motivation-- some people said that Grace

was jealous of the housekeeper.

Other people said that the housekeeper

was jealous of Grace.

Maybe it was both.

We don't know-- all of these kinds of things.

The most difficult one was how old was the murdered man.

The most difficult one was how old was the murdered man.

And that was very hard to find out.

There was a monument to a man of the same name

in the churchyard where we know the murdered man was buried.

But it was the wrong Thomas Kinnear.

He would have been about 75, which, excuse me,

is not a steamy, hot, and sexually motivated jealousy

drama.

Forgive me, all you 75-year-old men.

Forgive me, all you 75-year-old men.

But I managed through a friend in Scotland

to find the real one.

And he would have been about 43.

So judge's notes of the case--

illegible.

Newspaper reports-- unreliable.

They probably made a lot of it up,

as people did in the confession of Grace Marks.

Who knows what that really was--

all of these different details.

all of these different details.

So I needed to write a narrative that

took account of all of them, that allowed for all of them

to be true.

And that was the challenge.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Leave no stone unturned.

I had help.

I had somebody that I could send to these different places

to look in their libraries, in their archives.

to look in their libraries, in their archives.

And that was pretty helpful.

So if you need to use a qualified researcher,

it's worth it.

Cross checking is good and having more than one source.

Of course, with Grace Marks, there was more than one source.

But they contradicted each other.

We went to the archivist of the Kingston Penitentiary.

He was very helpful.

The newspaper reports were happily on microfiche

The newspaper reports were happily on microfiche

in the central reference library in Toronto.

The judge's notes were with the upper Canadian law society.

The notes from the man who ran the lunatic asylum

were in their archives.

And there was quite a lot of material

at the Kingston Penitentiary, except that there

had been a fire there, and some of it was in disarray.

The many petitions and letters sent on behalf of Grace--

because there were--

because there were--

had been in the National Library in Ottawa.

But somebody had thrown them out.

Rats.

Too bad.

I would have loved to have read them,

but I can kind of imagine what they were.

There was some record of Grace's handwriting.

We know that she could read and write.

We know that her family disappeared from Toronto.

They never turned up.

Nobody ever came and visited her at the penitentiary.

Nobody ever came and visited her at the penitentiary.

We don't know where they went.

Other research was such things like what

nationalities were the mix of immigrants in Toronto

at that time.

And I got that through a friend who was an historian

and had access to these censuses that were taken then.

A lot of newspaper accounts.

The case was very notorious, so people were interested in it.

So many people attended the trial

So many people attended the trial

that the courtroom floor broke, collapsed--

so many people.

And the hanging was very well attended--

the hanging of James McDermott-- although some of the newspaper

commentators took a dim view of ladies being present.

They didn't think it was ladylike to attend a hanging.

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"Alias Grace" took a lot of fact checking in

regards to what people were wearing

and what kinds of undergarments they were wearing.

And you want those things to be accurate,

because if they aren't accurate, somebody is going to spot it.

If you have a crinoline in 1820, you're going to be in trouble.

So Grace Marks went into the penitentiary

before crinolines developed.

before crinolines developed.

So she has not been in a position to wear any of them.

But she has observed them on the visitors as they have come.

She has this to say about them.

"There were no wire crinolines when I was first brought here.

They were horsehair then, as the wire ones were not thought of.

I have looked at them hanging in the wardrobes, when I go in

to tidy and empty the slops.

to tidy and empty the slops.

They are like bird cages; but what is being caged in?

Legs, the legs of ladies; legs penned in so they cannot get

out and go rubbing up against the gentlemen's trousers.

The Governor's wife never says legs,

although the newspapers said legs

when they were talking about Nancy,

with her dead legs sticking out from under the washtub."

How did I know about those kinds of details?

How did I know about those kinds of details?

First of all, I have a great book

called "The History of Costume" by Millia Davenport.

And you can pinpoint fairly precisely when fashions changed

and when certain kinds of undergarments came in.

So I knew about that.

And the squeamishness about legs in the middle Victorian period

is well known.

They even sometimes put little coverings

on the legs of the piano to avoid

on the legs of the piano to avoid

mention or suggestion of legs.

It was also a period in which you were not

supposed to sit down in a chair that had just

been vacated by a gentleman because the chair would

be suggestively warm.

You wouldn't want that.

You can still see in some buildings in London.

You can see crinoline staircases.

And those are staircases that have a railing that bulges out

And those are staircases that have a railing that bulges out

at the bottom and then goes up so the crinoline can go up

the stairs like this.

And you could hold onto the railing.

You can also see specially constructed furniture

that allowed someone in a crinoline to sit down,

because these were giant edifices.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When did underpants come in?

Underpants came in, pantalettes came

in when hoop skirts came in because the wind can blow

your hoop skirt inside out.

And if you didn't have any pantalettes on,

that could be very, very embarrassing.

And the reason why underpants were plural--

have you ever wondered that?

Because they used to be two separate legs

attached with a drawstring.

And should the drawstring break as you were parading

around the park in your hoop skirt and pantalettes,

around the park in your hoop skirt and pantalettes,

you might have quite an embarrassing experience.

During the Second World War when elastic was at a premium--

very scarce because it was being used in the war effort--

ladies' underpants didn't have elastic.

They had drawstrings.

And those can come off and flip down.

They weren't two separate legs.

They weren't two separate legs.

But your underpants could just fall off

as you were walking along the street.

And women got into the habit of just stepping out of one leg

and then flicking up with the other leg

and catching their underpants and just flipping them

into their purse.

Did you know that?