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Downloaded from
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Official YIFY movies site:
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[rock music playing]

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[Joan] I went to San Francisco

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because I had not been able to work
in some months.

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I'd been paralyzed by the conviction
that writing was an irrelevant act...

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that the world as I had understood it
no longer existed.

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It was the first time
I'd dealt directly and flatly

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with the evidence of atomization,

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the proof that things fall apart.

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If I was to work again,
it would be necessary for me

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to come to terms with disorder.

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[Dunne] When snakes would appear
so much in your...

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in your later work,
was that an unconscious...

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image, do you think, from growing up?

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I think it was an unconscious image
from growing up, yeah.

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But, I mean, snakes appeared
in my later work because they just--

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They were always on my mind.
You had to avoid them.

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-Do you have snakes?
-Hmm?

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-You have snakes?
-I have no snakes.

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I'm not a big fan of snakes.

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Well, how do you know up in the country?

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[Dunne] Uh...

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I just take a rake and kill it.

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Killing a snake is the same as
having a snake.

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-Oh, yes, that's true.
-[laughing]

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[Joan] My first notebook was a
Big 5 tablet given to me by my mother

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with the sensible suggestion
I stop whining

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and learn to amuse myself
by writing my thoughts.

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The first entry is a woman
who believes herself

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to be freezing to death
in the arctic night...

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only to find when day breaks she has
stumbled on to the Sahara desert

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where she will
die of the heat before lunch.

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I have no idea what turn of
a 5-year-old's mind

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could have prompted so
insistently ironic and exotic a story.

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But it does reveal
a predilection for the extreme

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which has dogged me into adult life.

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[Dunne] My Aunt Joan grew up on
stories of the doomed Donner party.

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Her family actually
traveled across the plains with them.

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They parted company when the Donners
insisted on taking an uncharted shortcut.

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Instead, her family followed
the map that they brought

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which safely guided them
to the last frontier...

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California.

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[Joan] "I was born in Sacramento
and lived in California most of my life.

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I learned to swim in the Sacramento
and the American rivers before the dams.

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I learned to drive on the levees
up and downriver from Sacramento.

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Yet California has remained
in some way impenetrable to me,

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a wearying enigma...

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as it has to many of us
who were from there."

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My family had come to Sacramento
in the 19th century.

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They came to it as a frontier.

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And it was the last frontier.

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Don't you think people are formed
by the landscape they grow up in?

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It formed everything I ever think,
or ever do, or am.

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I remember once
when we were snowbound,

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my mother gave me
several old copies of Vogue...

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and pointed out an announcement

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the competition Vogue then had
for college seniors, the Prix de Paris.

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First prize, a job in Paris or New York.

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"You could win that," my mother said.
"You could win that

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and live in Paris, or New York,
wherever you wanted.

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But definitely you could win it."

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My senior year at Berkeley, I did win it.

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I got out of Berkeley,
and I was offered a job at Vogue.

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So, I moved to New York to take the job.

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It was very thrilling to me, naturally.

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When I first saw New York, I was 20.

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And it was summer time,
and the warm air smelled of mildew

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and some instinct

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programmed by all the movies
I'd ever seen

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and all the songs I'd ever heard sung

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and the stories
I'd read about New York

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informed me it would never
be quite the same again.

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In fact, it never was.

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[Wintour] When she was here,
you know, some time ago,

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it was at a moment in
Vogue's history when,

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if you were an editor,
you'd still wear a hat and gloves.

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And if you were just an assistant,
no gloves, no hat.

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I mean, it was just a very--

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Everyone was addressed by Ms. or Mrs.
I mean, it was a very different time.

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[Rifield] It would be exciting,

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because Vogue was the preeminent
fashion magazine.

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You had to learn to...

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write with irony,

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or with a kind of humor, you know,
something that would grab the reader.

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You had to do it in this short space.

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You didn't have the luxury of
writing, and writing, and writing.

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They would've been a little daunted
by some of the editors.

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Allene Talmey,
whom, uh, Joan obviously knew,

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she could be very frightening.

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I remember she would have
this big aquamarine ring.

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She'd get violently

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crossing, x-ing out things, muttering:

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"Action verbs, action verbs."

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And everybody who lasted with her...

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basically learned to write.

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The first thing I wrote for Vogue was
"Self-respect, its source, its power."

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They had assigned a piece called...

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"Self-respect, its source, its power."
They put it on the cover.

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And the writer didn't materialize.
No piece came in.

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So, I had to write it.

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[woman] People with self-respect
exhibit a certain toughness,

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a kind of moral nerve.

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They display what was
once called "character"...

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a quality which although
approved in abstract

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sometimes loses ground to other,
more instantly negotiable virtues.

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"Character," the willingness to accept
responsibility for one's own life,

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is the source from which
self-respect springs.

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However long we postpone it,
we eventually lie down alone...

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in that notoriously uncomfortable bed,
the one we make ourselves.

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Whether or not we sleep in it
depends, of course,

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on whether or not we respect ourselves.

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[Dunne] It seems that would be unusual
for Vogue to have a voice like that,

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that personal. Was it?

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Well, it was probably...

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sort of unusual, yeah.

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You might have pieces on ways of
doing makeup or something like that

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but these weren't like that.

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They were personal pieces.

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I started writing a novel, basically,
when I came to New York.

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That was sort of what you... did.

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You got out of school,
and now you were gonna write a novel.

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So, I'd work all day at Vogue
then I'd come home...

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and have dinner or whatever and do this.

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I didn't have any
real clear picture of how to do it.

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So, I would just do parts of it.

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And then I would just pin up
these parts on the walls of my apartment.

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I think ten people read it.

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I think a total of 11 copies were sold.
[chuckles]

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[Jim] First time I saw her in print

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was probably her first novel
which was Run River.

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It's not her best novel,
but it was her first, and it was the, uh--

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The, uh, story about people we knew.

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It was a Sacramento story.

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So, I've always enjoyed that.

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[Joan] "Here was the story
about my father.

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There was about him a sadness so pervasive
that it colored even those moments

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when he seemed to be having a good time.

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He could be in the middle of a party at
our own house, sitting at the piano,

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a bourbon highball always within reach.

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The tension he transmitted
would seem so great

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that I would have to leave,
run to my room and close the door."

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My father was severely depressed.

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I didn't realize that at the time.
I thought...

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this depressed behavior
was totally normal.

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"We went to the movies
three or four afternoons a week.

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And it was there that
I first saw John Wayne.

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I heard him tell a girl in a picture
he'd build her a house

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at the bend in the river
where the cottonwoods grow.

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Deep in that part of my heart
where the artificial rain forever falls...

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that is still the line I wait to hear.

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As it happened, I did not grow up to be
the woman who is the heroine in a Western.

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All of the men I have known
have had many virtues

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and have taken me to live in
many places I have come to love,

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they have never been John Wayne.

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They have never taken me to that bend
in the river where the cottonwoods grow."

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[Dunne] He's, you know, a protector.

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You married a protector.

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I did.

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Although...

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Also-- Also a hothead.

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[both laughing]

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-Quick with a gun.
-Yeah.

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[Trillin] I met John Gregory Dunne at
TIME magazine.

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We were sitting in this building,
late at night

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with too much to drink.

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And, so, there were a lot of
affairs going on.

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But people were very quiet about it.

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00:12:04,766 --> 00:12:06,393
John was a great gossip...

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and, uh, always came into my office...

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and held up his hand and said,

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"This, you will not believe."

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I made him a character in a novel
about working at a news magazine.

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The beginning of the book had a claimer
instead of a disclaimer. And it said,

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"The character of Andy Wolferman is
based on John Gregory Dunne,

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though it tends to flatter."

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Later, he said,

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"Calvin, I was wondering, what's the--?

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Why was I Jewish in the book?"

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And I said,
"That's the 'tends to flatter,' John.

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You don't want to be a
lace curtain Irish all your life."

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As Irish Catholics become assimilated,
they lose something.

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They lose their Irish
which makes them, uh, unique.

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It's sort of a very sort of
dark, uh, sense of humor that they have.

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The Irish sense of humor is
"A man kisses the Blarney Stone

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and falls and fractures his skull."
That makes the Irish laugh.

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There is that sense of storytelling,
and the Irish are great storytellers.

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[Dunne] As Joan's family
crossed the frontier,

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John's grandfather came through
Ellis Island at the age of 11

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with only a 3rd-grade education.

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It was his love of storytelling that John
said influenced him to become a writer.

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He'd offer the kids a quarter,
a lot of money at the time...

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00:13:34,982 --> 00:13:37,860
to recite a Shakespeare sonnet or poem.

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00:13:39,611 --> 00:13:42,990
John went on to write 13 books,
both fiction and non-fiction.

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His older brother
and my father, Dominick Dunne,

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also became a journalist and novelist.

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[Joan] I went to Hartford and
fell in love with his family...

198
00:13:56,253 --> 00:13:58,839
and determined that I was
gonna marry him...

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00:14:00,507 --> 00:14:01,925
and did.

200
00:14:07,431 --> 00:14:09,600
I don't know what "fall in love" means.

201
00:14:09,933 --> 00:14:12,269
Um... It's not part of my...

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00:14:13,770 --> 00:14:14,813
world.

203
00:14:16,565 --> 00:14:21,195
But I do remember having a very clear
sense that I wanted this to continue.

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I liked being a couple.

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00:14:24,740 --> 00:14:27,701
I liked having somebody there.

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00:14:29,203 --> 00:14:31,830
I could not have been with
somebody who wasn't a writer

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00:14:31,914 --> 00:14:35,000
because that person
would not have had patience with me.

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00:14:38,337 --> 00:14:40,589
[John] In the spring,
after we got married,

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00:14:40,672 --> 00:14:44,343
Joan and I got fearfully drunk
at this party.

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00:14:44,426 --> 00:14:46,136
And the next morning,

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00:14:46,929 --> 00:14:48,472
uh, we had breakfast at a--

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00:14:48,931 --> 00:14:50,057
On Madison Avenue.

213
00:14:50,432 --> 00:14:52,309
At a coffee shop, a drug store.

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00:14:52,726 --> 00:14:55,646
And Joan started to cry at breakfast.

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00:14:56,146 --> 00:14:57,648
And so I had to go to work.

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00:14:58,148 --> 00:15:01,527
I got into work. I called her.
"Would you mind if I quit?"

217
00:15:02,110 --> 00:15:03,362
And she said, "No."

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00:15:03,862 --> 00:15:06,657
I said, "We'll figure out
what we're going to do."

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00:15:06,740 --> 00:15:08,575
And I went in and gave my notice.

220
00:15:09,743 --> 00:15:11,537
End of story. End of time.

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00:15:15,624 --> 00:15:19,503
[woman] It's easy to see the beginnings
of things and harder to see the ends.

222
00:15:22,339 --> 00:15:24,550
I remember now
with a clarity that makes

223
00:15:24,633 --> 00:15:27,469
the nerves on the
back of my neck constrict...

224
00:15:27,928 --> 00:15:29,513
when New York began for me.

225
00:15:31,139 --> 00:15:34,226
But I cannot lay my finger
upon the moment it ended.

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00:15:41,942 --> 00:15:45,445
All I know is that it was
very bad when I was 28.

227
00:15:46,697 --> 00:15:50,117
Everything that was said to me,
I seemed to have heard before.

228
00:15:50,409 --> 00:15:52,160
And I could no longer listen.

229
00:15:54,329 --> 00:15:56,290
I hurt people I cared about...

230
00:15:56,915 --> 00:15:59,001
and insulted those I did not.

231
00:16:00,627 --> 00:16:03,797
I cried until I was not even
aware when I was crying.

232
00:16:04,715 --> 00:16:08,260
Cried in elevators, and in taxis,
and in Chinese laundries.

233
00:16:09,928 --> 00:16:14,516
That was the year, my 28th, when I began
to understand the lesson in that story...

234
00:16:15,309 --> 00:16:19,354
which was that it is distinctly possible
to stay too long at the fair.

235
00:16:32,534 --> 00:16:35,829
[Joan] Then we decided to
move to California for six months.

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00:16:37,331 --> 00:16:39,625
I put an ad in the Los Angeles Times.

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00:16:39,708 --> 00:16:43,378
"Writer, wife, desire house." You know.

238
00:16:43,462 --> 00:16:44,963
And the writer and wife...

239
00:16:45,631 --> 00:16:49,218
specifically desired a house
on the west side of Los Angeles.

240
00:16:49,301 --> 00:16:50,636
And we wanted to pay...

241
00:16:51,470 --> 00:16:55,557
something like $300 for it.
I mean, the whole thing was ridiculous.

242
00:16:56,433 --> 00:17:00,229
We finally got a house. Your mother
went out and looked at it for us.

243
00:17:00,312 --> 00:17:02,189
That house in Portuguese Bend.

244
00:17:08,654 --> 00:17:13,116
Only your mother would drive 60 miles
to look at a house for somebody.

245
00:17:27,798 --> 00:17:29,675
[Dunne] We loved going to Portuguese Bend.

246
00:17:30,968 --> 00:17:34,096
Their house was on a bluff
overlooking the Pacific.

247
00:17:36,265 --> 00:17:38,392
Joan would point out migrating whales.

248
00:17:38,475 --> 00:17:40,936
And John would take my sister, Dominique,

249
00:17:41,019 --> 00:17:44,439
my brother, Alex, and I down to
these tide pools

250
00:17:44,523 --> 00:17:46,275
where we'd catch sand crabs.

251
00:17:52,489 --> 00:17:54,950
There was this cave, and we would swim.

252
00:17:56,034 --> 00:17:58,620
You had to get into
the water at a certain point

253
00:17:58,704 --> 00:18:01,915
and get beyond the-- The surf.

254
00:18:08,088 --> 00:18:10,090
"The tide had to be just right.

255
00:18:11,216 --> 00:18:15,220
And you had to be in the water
at the very moment the tide changed.

256
00:18:16,638 --> 00:18:20,184
We had to be in the water
at the very moment the tide was right.

257
00:18:21,059 --> 00:18:24,062
Each time we did it,
I was afraid of missing the swell,

258
00:18:24,146 --> 00:18:26,356
hanging back, timing it wrong.

259
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:27,608
He never was.

260
00:18:28,734 --> 00:18:32,571
You had to feel the swell change.
You had to go with the change."

261
00:18:34,740 --> 00:18:35,908
He told me that.

262
00:18:38,327 --> 00:18:41,872
Do you remember--? Do you remember
meeting me for the first time?

263
00:18:42,539 --> 00:18:44,875
[Joan] Maybe it was at Portuguese Bend.

264
00:18:45,834 --> 00:18:47,461
[Dunne] Here's my, like...

265
00:18:48,795 --> 00:18:51,006
five-year-old memory of meeting you.

266
00:18:51,715 --> 00:18:53,008
We were at the pool.

267
00:18:53,675 --> 00:18:56,053
Alex and I had matching swim trunks,

268
00:18:56,637 --> 00:19:01,391
these tight, like, bicycle pants
with gold buckles on it.

269
00:19:03,060 --> 00:19:06,396
And, uh, we were, uh--

270
00:19:06,480 --> 00:19:09,983
This is how-- This is during
our leisure time in our matching...

271
00:19:10,526 --> 00:19:11,527
-Uh...
-[laughing]

272
00:19:12,110 --> 00:19:16,865
bathing suits. And everybody was very
excited about you and John coming over.

273
00:19:17,491 --> 00:19:20,327
Mom was kind of nervous
and was telling us about

274
00:19:20,410 --> 00:19:22,246
we're gonna meet John's wife.

275
00:19:22,496 --> 00:19:23,872
I'm meeting you.

276
00:19:24,331 --> 00:19:27,501
And, uh, John... says, uh...

277
00:19:29,461 --> 00:19:33,841
"Griffin, you got a little-- You got a
little something poking out of there."

278
00:19:34,800 --> 00:19:39,513
And I looked down and one ball
has come out of the seam

279
00:19:39,596 --> 00:19:42,099
that was broken in the tight bathing suit.

280
00:19:43,100 --> 00:19:47,521
And Dad, and John, and I think
my mom roared with laughter.

281
00:19:48,063 --> 00:19:49,815
And I was scarlet.

282
00:19:49,898 --> 00:19:51,859
I was so embarrassed.

283
00:19:52,734 --> 00:19:58,198
You were the only one that didn't laugh.
You just kept right on going, just like--

284
00:19:58,615 --> 00:20:00,242
With a totally straight face.

285
00:20:00,909 --> 00:20:03,996
[chuckles] I always--
I always loved you for that.

286
00:20:04,079 --> 00:20:05,455
[both laughing]

287
00:20:05,831 --> 00:20:08,125
But John, of course, was relentless.

288
00:20:13,547 --> 00:20:15,966
Six months at Portuguese Bend
became a year.

289
00:20:17,342 --> 00:20:21,430
John was writing a book about Cesar
Chavez and the California grape strike.

290
00:20:21,513 --> 00:20:25,809
Joan traveled through the central valley
to help with research and reporting.

291
00:20:35,194 --> 00:20:37,654
To pay bills, they wrote magazine articles

292
00:20:37,738 --> 00:20:41,074
for the Saturday Evening Post,
Holiday, LIFE, and Esquire.

293
00:20:44,661 --> 00:20:46,872
At one point, they even shared a column.

294
00:20:49,082 --> 00:20:52,503
And despite how different their styles
and points of view were,

295
00:20:52,586 --> 00:20:54,755
they would never turn in a piece

296
00:20:54,838 --> 00:20:57,508
without running it by the other
for a final edit.

297
00:20:58,634 --> 00:21:01,053
They were each other's
most trusted reader.

298
00:21:07,309 --> 00:21:09,728
Were you thinking about
children at that point?

299
00:21:09,811 --> 00:21:12,523
[Joan] I was thinking about children.
He was thinking about children.

300
00:21:12,606 --> 00:21:14,066
But we couldn't have one.

301
00:21:16,318 --> 00:21:18,529
Suddenly, we got offered one.

302
00:21:20,113 --> 00:21:21,114
What do you mean?

303
00:21:21,657 --> 00:21:22,699
I mean...

304
00:21:23,825 --> 00:21:25,202
the phone rang one day.

305
00:21:29,289 --> 00:21:33,377
"I was taking a shower and burst
into tears when John came in to report

306
00:21:33,460 --> 00:21:36,296
what the obstetrician
who delivered her said.

307
00:21:38,382 --> 00:21:41,927
'I have a beautiful baby girl at
Saint John's,' is what he said.

308
00:21:42,010 --> 00:21:43,846
'I need to know if you want her.'

309
00:21:46,265 --> 00:21:49,810
Later, we stood outside the window
of the nursery at Saint John's

310
00:21:49,893 --> 00:21:51,144
looking at an infant...

311
00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:53,272
with fierce dark hair...

312
00:21:53,814 --> 00:21:55,440
and rosebud features.

313
00:21:56,608 --> 00:21:59,236
The beads on her wrist
spelled not her name

314
00:21:59,319 --> 00:22:01,780
but NI for 'No Information.'"

315
00:22:02,948 --> 00:22:07,327
Well, I mean, there was no question.
This baby was gonna be ours. Yeah.

316
00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:14,251
Almost everybody I know who has ever...

317
00:22:14,835 --> 00:22:16,003
had a child...

318
00:22:17,421 --> 00:22:21,258
is afraid before the baby comes
that they won't be up to it.

319
00:22:24,511 --> 00:22:27,723
The reality couldn't have
been more perfect.

320
00:22:30,475 --> 00:22:33,478
I remembered leaving the hospital
with her and driving.

321
00:22:36,148 --> 00:22:39,526
We were on the
San Diego freeway going home.

322
00:22:40,944 --> 00:22:45,157
I always thought of myself as
bonding with her on the San Diego.

323
00:22:52,164 --> 00:22:54,708
[Dunne] These pictures are from
Quintana's christening,

324
00:22:55,083 --> 00:22:57,669
two months after
John and Joan brought her home.

325
00:23:00,797 --> 00:23:04,968
John might have been a lapsed Catholic,
but he was Catholic to his core.

326
00:23:05,052 --> 00:23:09,223
The idea that something could happen to
Quintana during those two months,

327
00:23:09,306 --> 00:23:13,268
sending her to limbo, was a risk
John just wasn't willing to take.

328
00:23:13,977 --> 00:23:16,063
So, on their first night home...

329
00:23:16,855 --> 00:23:20,192
unordained John
waited until Joan was asleep

330
00:23:20,567 --> 00:23:22,903
and he snuck Quintana into the bathroom

331
00:23:23,111 --> 00:23:25,739
and baptized her
right there under the sink.

332
00:23:27,866 --> 00:23:32,246
[Joan] We had to move out of the house at
the beach because they didn't want a baby.

333
00:23:33,121 --> 00:23:34,665
We were not "writer, wife."

334
00:23:34,748 --> 00:23:36,625
We were "writer, wife, baby."

335
00:23:39,586 --> 00:23:40,838
[rock music playing]

336
00:23:48,220 --> 00:23:51,181
[woman] In the years I'm talking about,
I was in a large house

337
00:23:51,265 --> 00:23:53,725
in a part of Hollywood
that was once expensive

338
00:23:53,809 --> 00:23:56,395
and was now described
by one of my acquaintances

339
00:23:56,478 --> 00:23:58,939
as a senseless killing neighborhood.

340
00:24:07,322 --> 00:24:09,324
Since the inclination to rent

341
00:24:09,408 --> 00:24:14,079
an unfurnished 28-room house for a
month or two is a distinctly special one,

342
00:24:14,788 --> 00:24:16,957
the neighborhood was peopled mainly by

343
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:21,670
rock 'n' roll bands, therapy groups,
and by my husband, my daughter, and me.

344
00:24:25,799 --> 00:24:30,804
[Moore] They had this wonderful old
Hollywood house on Franklin Avenue.

345
00:24:31,889 --> 00:24:33,932
Big, not too much furniture.

346
00:24:34,016 --> 00:24:38,520
I lived there a while. I was trying
to remember why I lived with them.

347
00:24:39,479 --> 00:24:42,441
She would come down
fairly late in the morning.

348
00:24:42,524 --> 00:24:43,942
I'd be in the kitchen.

349
00:24:45,068 --> 00:24:47,529
She'd have a cold...

350
00:24:48,447 --> 00:24:51,533
Coke in the bottle from the refrigerator.

351
00:24:51,617 --> 00:24:54,536
She'd be wearing sunglasses... silent.

352
00:24:54,620 --> 00:24:58,123
I had to have Coca-Colas
in the refrigerator.

353
00:24:59,666 --> 00:25:01,668
And they had to be really cold.

354
00:25:03,253 --> 00:25:07,799
And if anyone took my last Coca-Cola,
we would have a scene in the kitchen.

355
00:25:08,759 --> 00:25:13,514
There was always a big case of canned...

356
00:25:14,431 --> 00:25:17,309
uh, salted almonds
which her mother sent her,

357
00:25:17,392 --> 00:25:19,561
I think, for Christmas each year.

358
00:25:19,645 --> 00:25:22,731
It had to be more often
because she ate them so quickly.

359
00:25:22,814 --> 00:25:26,693
And she would open a can, I remember
the sound. You know that sound.

360
00:25:27,486 --> 00:25:29,238
I'd sit there with my coffee.

361
00:25:29,321 --> 00:25:33,200
And she'd sit there in her sunglasses
with the Coke and the nuts.

362
00:25:33,283 --> 00:25:35,244
But neither of us speaking.

363
00:25:38,580 --> 00:25:41,542
[Joan] I like to sit around
and watch people do what they do.

364
00:25:41,625 --> 00:25:43,460
I don't like to ask questions.

365
00:25:43,544 --> 00:25:44,628
[The Doors' "Five to One" playing]

366
00:25:44,711 --> 00:25:46,630
Jim Morrison, I did a piece on.

367
00:25:47,422 --> 00:25:50,551
Rock 'n' roll people
are the ideal subject for me.

368
00:25:50,634 --> 00:25:53,345
They will just
lead their lives in front of you.

369
00:25:53,595 --> 00:25:56,557
-[Dunne] Did you like The Doors?
-I was crazy about The Doors.

370
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,601
-What is it about The Doors that drew you?
-Bad boys.

371
00:26:00,185 --> 00:26:01,562
♪ Come on ♪

372
00:26:08,902 --> 00:26:12,447
[Joan] I was doing a piece on
the Haight-Ashbury in 1967.

373
00:26:14,867 --> 00:26:19,329
And it seemed to me that we were
seeing the tip of something important

374
00:26:19,413 --> 00:26:21,707
that wasn't about "hippies," you know?

375
00:26:21,790 --> 00:26:25,002
That it was about
disaffected children, et cetera.

376
00:26:30,174 --> 00:26:32,467
♪ Five to one, baby ♪

377
00:26:32,551 --> 00:26:34,511
♪ One in five ♪

378
00:26:35,637 --> 00:26:40,225
♪ No one here gets out alive now ♪

379
00:26:40,767 --> 00:26:43,896
The idea that you could
write the history of your time,

380
00:26:43,979 --> 00:26:47,149
which, I think, is what Joan has done
through the essay,

381
00:26:47,232 --> 00:26:49,776
and could be a form
which would be as supple,

382
00:26:49,860 --> 00:26:53,864
and as versatile,
and as nuanced as fiction,

383
00:26:54,364 --> 00:26:55,908
is something extraordinary.

384
00:26:56,700 --> 00:26:59,912
She makes it do things that
nobody ever made it do before.

385
00:27:03,832 --> 00:27:05,584
The center was not holding.

386
00:27:08,170 --> 00:27:12,216
It was a country of bankruptcy notices,
public auction announcements,

387
00:27:12,299 --> 00:27:14,635
commonplace reports of casual killings,

388
00:27:14,718 --> 00:27:18,180
misplaced children,
and abandoned homes and vandals

389
00:27:18,263 --> 00:27:21,934
who misspelled even the
four-letter words they scrawled.

390
00:27:24,102 --> 00:27:27,314
It was a country in which
families routinely disappeared,

391
00:27:27,397 --> 00:27:30,859
trailing bad checks
and repossession papers.

392
00:27:30,943 --> 00:27:34,613
Adolescents drifted from
city to torn city,

393
00:27:34,696 --> 00:27:37,616
sloughing off both
the past and the future

394
00:27:37,699 --> 00:27:40,118
as snakes shed their skins.

395
00:27:42,079 --> 00:27:45,332
Children who were never taught
and would never now learn

396
00:27:45,415 --> 00:27:48,085
the games that had held society together.

397
00:27:52,422 --> 00:27:55,133
Children were missing.
Parents were missing.

398
00:27:55,509 --> 00:27:59,304
Those left behind filed
desultory missing persons reports

399
00:27:59,763 --> 00:28:01,640
then moved on themselves.

400
00:28:05,936 --> 00:28:08,897
[Joan] I had a 2-year-old at the time
I was working on that.

401
00:28:08,981 --> 00:28:13,151
So, it was particularly vivid to me
to see these other children.

402
00:28:13,902 --> 00:28:17,322
It was vivid to me
because I was away from the 2-year-old...

403
00:28:18,031 --> 00:28:21,410
and feeling slightly
cut off from her, yeah.

404
00:28:24,955 --> 00:28:27,583
[Hare] When I finally find my contact,
he says,

405
00:28:27,666 --> 00:28:30,669
"I got something at my place
that will blow your mind."

406
00:28:31,128 --> 00:28:34,256
When we get there,
I see a child on the living room floor

407
00:28:34,339 --> 00:28:36,508
licking her lips in concentration.

408
00:28:36,592 --> 00:28:40,929
The only thing off about her is
that she's wearing white lipstick.

409
00:28:41,555 --> 00:28:45,684
"Five years old," the contact says,
"on acid."

410
00:28:46,685 --> 00:28:49,188
[Dunne] What was it like
to be a journalist in the room

411
00:28:49,271 --> 00:28:51,732
when you saw the little kid on acid?

412
00:28:52,107 --> 00:28:53,150
Well, it was--

413
00:29:00,365 --> 00:29:01,992
Let me tell you, it was gold.

414
00:29:02,576 --> 00:29:05,787
I mean, that's the long
and the short of it is...

415
00:29:06,288 --> 00:29:09,249
you live for moments like that...

416
00:29:09,333 --> 00:29:12,127
if you're... doing a piece.

417
00:29:15,297 --> 00:29:16,423
Good or bad.

418
00:29:19,051 --> 00:29:22,513
[Hare] Obviously, we being repressed,
miserable...

419
00:29:22,888 --> 00:29:24,848
dank English folk,

420
00:29:24,932 --> 00:29:27,643
we loved the sound of hippiedom, you know?

421
00:29:27,809 --> 00:29:31,271
Uh, we thought San Francisco
sounded absolutely great to us.

422
00:29:31,355 --> 00:29:36,026
And so, you know, Joan Didion
reporting from the heart of, um,

423
00:29:36,109 --> 00:29:38,779
Haight-Ashbury about
what it was actually like

424
00:29:38,862 --> 00:29:41,073
came as a bit of a bracing shock to us.

425
00:29:41,156 --> 00:29:44,618
That's not how we thought
the whole thing should be seen.

426
00:29:44,701 --> 00:29:48,080
But I can see that very early on
in that early reporting,

427
00:29:48,163 --> 00:29:51,458
there's a sort of horror of disorder...

428
00:29:52,793 --> 00:29:56,255
which is very much
a feature of Joan's writing...

429
00:29:56,964 --> 00:29:58,423
and Joan's personality.

430
00:30:02,553 --> 00:30:04,096
[Joan] I was living in Los Angeles.

431
00:30:04,179 --> 00:30:07,182
And the magazines I was
writing for were in New York.

432
00:30:07,266 --> 00:30:10,978
And so, I was reporting on
a lot of stuff that they weren't seeing.

433
00:30:11,603 --> 00:30:13,856
Sometimes, you hit a piece that seemed--

434
00:30:13,939 --> 00:30:17,568
That it could take a longer length
than a magazine could give you.

435
00:30:17,651 --> 00:30:22,489
I might do a non-fiction book someday,
but I didn't do one for a long time.

436
00:30:29,121 --> 00:30:31,248
It comes from that Yeats poem,

437
00:30:31,331 --> 00:30:34,626
When what rough beast slouches
Toward Bethlehem to be born

438
00:30:40,299 --> 00:30:42,509
[John] It was reviewed by someone
in TheNew York Times.

439
00:30:42,593 --> 00:30:44,636
They said what made this book special

440
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:47,514
is it emphasized
what used to be called character.

441
00:30:49,641 --> 00:30:50,934
And it was boom.

442
00:30:51,018 --> 00:30:54,104
And all of a sudden, you were a figure.

443
00:30:54,897 --> 00:30:56,607
[Janis Joplin's "Half Moon" playing]

444
00:31:10,996 --> 00:31:14,833
♪ Half moon, night time sky ♪

445
00:31:14,917 --> 00:31:18,253
♪ Seven stars, heaven's eyes ♪

446
00:31:18,337 --> 00:31:20,380
[woman]
Someone once brought Janis Joplin

447
00:31:20,464 --> 00:31:22,883
to a party at the house
on Franklin Avenue.

448
00:31:23,675 --> 00:31:25,344
She had just done a concert,

449
00:31:25,427 --> 00:31:28,889
and she wanted a brandy
and Benedictine in a water tumbler.

450
00:31:28,972 --> 00:31:32,142
Music people never wanted ordinary drinks.

451
00:31:32,601 --> 00:31:37,439
They wanted sake,
or champagne cocktails, or tequila neat.

452
00:31:38,607 --> 00:31:41,610
Spending time with music people
was confusing.

453
00:31:43,237 --> 00:31:44,446
That party was--

454
00:31:45,948 --> 00:31:48,700
Was maybe the biggest party we ever had.

455
00:31:48,784 --> 00:31:50,035
♪ --and arms aflame ♪

456
00:31:51,119 --> 00:31:54,081
♪ Wings rise up to call your name ♪

457
00:31:57,125 --> 00:31:58,877
[Joan] About midway through the party,

458
00:31:58,961 --> 00:32:01,922
we realized that people
were missing their cars.

459
00:32:02,297 --> 00:32:06,760
I pointed this out to the parking guy,
and he said, "What can I do, Mrs. Dunne?

460
00:32:06,844 --> 00:32:10,305
How did I know you lived in
a terrible neighborhood?" [laughing]

461
00:32:12,724 --> 00:32:16,562
The horrible thing I remember is
going up to Quintana's room just to

462
00:32:17,062 --> 00:32:19,523
check and make sure that
everything was okay.

463
00:32:20,107 --> 00:32:21,108
And...

464
00:32:23,110 --> 00:32:24,903
there were drugs on the floor.

465
00:32:26,029 --> 00:32:28,699
I couldn't believe that
anybody would do that.

466
00:32:30,701 --> 00:32:34,413
There were a lot of drugs
around town at that time.

467
00:32:34,496 --> 00:32:38,750
And the presence of these drugs
became all that was on anybody's mind.

468
00:32:40,335 --> 00:32:43,881
You wanted to get rid of them.
You wanted them out of your house.

469
00:32:49,219 --> 00:32:50,804
[man] Friday night in Los Angeles,

470
00:32:50,888 --> 00:32:53,932
a movie actress
and four of her friends were murdered

471
00:32:54,016 --> 00:32:56,226
and the circumstances were lurid.

472
00:32:57,394 --> 00:33:00,606
This was at the home
of Roman Polanski.

473
00:33:00,689 --> 00:33:04,026
And it was his wife, Sharon Tate,
who was one of the victims.

474
00:33:04,109 --> 00:33:07,279
She too had been stabbed,
repeated stab wounds.

475
00:33:07,821 --> 00:33:11,074
One of the victims had
a hood placed over his head,

476
00:33:11,158 --> 00:33:14,620
and the word "pig" was
written in blood on the door.

477
00:33:15,871 --> 00:33:17,748
[woman] Many people I know in Los Angeles

478
00:33:17,831 --> 00:33:23,045
believed that the '60s ended
abruptly on August 9th, 1969.

479
00:33:23,128 --> 00:33:26,924
Ended at the exact moment when
the word of the murders of Cielo Drive

480
00:33:27,007 --> 00:33:30,010
traveled like brushfire
through the community.

481
00:33:33,639 --> 00:33:35,974
[Dunne] Where were you
when you heard about Manson?

482
00:33:36,058 --> 00:33:37,768
In your mother's swimming pool.

483
00:33:38,644 --> 00:33:42,272
Your mother was wearing
a Pucci bathing suit.

484
00:33:42,356 --> 00:33:44,942
The phone was ringing.
She answered the phone.

485
00:33:45,025 --> 00:33:46,944
-And it was Natalie.
-[Dunne] Natalie Wood.

486
00:33:47,027 --> 00:33:49,905
And Natalie was calling to tell her

487
00:33:49,988 --> 00:33:53,659
that this terrible thing
had happened the night before.

488
00:33:57,204 --> 00:34:00,207
Before the Manson case,

489
00:34:00,290 --> 00:34:02,543
everything seemed explicable.

490
00:34:03,043 --> 00:34:04,294
And suddenly...

491
00:34:04,962 --> 00:34:08,048
the Manson case happened
and nothing was making sense.

492
00:34:10,676 --> 00:34:11,885
[man] Tiny Linda Kasabian,

493
00:34:11,969 --> 00:34:15,430
20 years old and 7 months pregnant
with her second child,

494
00:34:15,514 --> 00:34:17,349
already has pleaded not guilty

495
00:34:17,432 --> 00:34:20,561
in the murders of Sharon Tate
and six other persons.

496
00:34:20,644 --> 00:34:24,481
[Joan] Linda Kasabian, the person I was
interviewing on the Manson case,

497
00:34:24,565 --> 00:34:28,485
told me they had gone by our house
which was spooky.

498
00:34:30,445 --> 00:34:32,865
[Dunne] What was it like
interviewing Linda Kasabian?

499
00:34:32,948 --> 00:34:35,826
[Joan] Well, I spent quite
a bit of time with her, actually,

500
00:34:36,326 --> 00:34:39,162
both when she was in jail
and before she testified.

501
00:34:41,206 --> 00:34:44,168
That was a weird... situation.

502
00:34:44,251 --> 00:34:48,088
Finding myself cooking... dinner for...

503
00:34:50,132 --> 00:34:52,885
Linda Kasabian and her child.

504
00:34:53,927 --> 00:34:55,220
And the child was--

505
00:34:56,180 --> 00:34:58,223
The child had to be bathed, and--

506
00:34:58,307 --> 00:35:01,226
You know, the whole thing was weirdly...

507
00:35:06,899 --> 00:35:08,442
It was weirdly normal...

508
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:13,363
and yet it was not normal
in any way at all.

509
00:35:14,907 --> 00:35:18,035
[woman] In this light,
all narrative was sentimental.

510
00:35:18,118 --> 00:35:21,496
In this light,
all connections were equally meaningful

511
00:35:21,580 --> 00:35:23,415
and equally senseless.

512
00:35:25,125 --> 00:35:26,168
Try these.

513
00:35:27,669 --> 00:35:31,298
On the morning of
John Kennedy's death in 1963,

514
00:35:31,965 --> 00:35:35,344
I was buying,
at Ransohoff's in San Francisco,

515
00:35:35,427 --> 00:35:38,597
a short silk dress
in which to be married.

516
00:35:39,348 --> 00:35:42,226
A few years later,
this dress of mine was ruined

517
00:35:42,309 --> 00:35:44,228
when at a dinner party in Bel Air,

518
00:35:44,311 --> 00:35:48,482
Roman Polanski accidentally
spilled a glass of red wine on it.

519
00:35:50,776 --> 00:35:53,111
On July 27th, 1970,

520
00:35:53,195 --> 00:35:57,491
I went to the Magnin High shop
in Beverly Hills and picked out,

521
00:35:57,824 --> 00:35:59,826
at Linda Kasabian's request,

522
00:35:59,910 --> 00:36:02,454
the dress in which she began her testimony

523
00:36:02,538 --> 00:36:07,042
about the murders at Sharon Tate
Polanski's house on Cielo Drive.

524
00:36:09,837 --> 00:36:13,966
I believe this to be an authentically
senseless chain of correspondences.

525
00:36:14,758 --> 00:36:17,344
But in the jingle jangle morning
of that summer,

526
00:36:17,427 --> 00:36:19,805
it made as much sense
as anything else did.

527
00:36:25,853 --> 00:36:29,773
[Joan] The White Album,
I think those pieces are

528
00:36:29,857 --> 00:36:32,025
about the late '60s, early '70s.

529
00:36:35,070 --> 00:36:38,031
The Beatles album
figured in the Manson Trial.

530
00:36:38,532 --> 00:36:40,909
It was a kind of dark album.

531
00:36:40,993 --> 00:36:43,287
And that was the period.

532
00:36:46,331 --> 00:36:48,667
[Als] On The Beatles' album,
The White Album,

533
00:36:49,001 --> 00:36:53,172
there's ballads, and there are
sound experiments by Lennon.

534
00:36:53,255 --> 00:36:56,008
There are soft songs,

535
00:36:56,091 --> 00:36:58,218
hard songs, instrumental.

536
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:01,471
She does a very similar thing
in that essay

537
00:37:01,555 --> 00:37:04,808
which I find... profound,
and it took ten years.

538
00:37:04,892 --> 00:37:10,480
If you look at the date, I think it's a
ten-year period where she worked... on it.

539
00:37:12,024 --> 00:37:14,651
You couldn't make a narrative
about the times.

540
00:37:14,735 --> 00:37:16,612
The times weren't cohesive.

541
00:37:16,695 --> 00:37:22,618
So, she found this way, which is to
kind of make a verbal record of the times.

542
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,415
[woman] I am talking here about
a time when I began to doubt

543
00:37:28,498 --> 00:37:32,461
the premises of all the stories
I had ever told myself.

544
00:37:39,968 --> 00:37:42,804
A common condition,
but one I found troubling.

545
00:37:45,807 --> 00:37:49,186
I suppose this period began around 1966

546
00:37:49,269 --> 00:37:51,813
and continued until 1971.

547
00:37:52,940 --> 00:37:56,151
During those five years,
I appeared, on the face of it,

548
00:37:56,235 --> 00:37:59,238
a competent enough member
of some community or another.

549
00:38:00,489 --> 00:38:04,243
I wrote a couple of times a month
for one magazine or another,

550
00:38:04,326 --> 00:38:06,036
published two books,

551
00:38:06,537 --> 00:38:09,498
participated in the paranoia of the time.

552
00:38:11,667 --> 00:38:16,046
The weirdness of America
somehow got into this person's bones

553
00:38:16,463 --> 00:38:19,383
and came out on
the other side of a typewriter.

554
00:38:21,218 --> 00:38:23,095
[Dunne] What was going on
in your marriage?

555
00:38:23,178 --> 00:38:25,055
[Joan] Well, he was not happy with...

556
00:38:25,806 --> 00:38:30,352
what he was doing, and what was going on
in our marriage was we were not happy.

557
00:38:32,855 --> 00:38:36,483
He had a temper, a horrible temper, yeah.

558
00:38:37,317 --> 00:38:38,610
I didn't.

559
00:38:38,694 --> 00:38:42,281
-What things would set him off?
-Everything would set him off.

560
00:38:44,366 --> 00:38:48,161
[woman] I want you to know
as you read me precisely who I am,

561
00:38:48,245 --> 00:38:51,206
and where I am, and what is on my mind.

562
00:38:56,461 --> 00:38:59,840
I want you to understand
exactly what you're getting.

563
00:39:01,383 --> 00:39:03,927
You're getting a woman,
who for some time now,

564
00:39:04,011 --> 00:39:07,514
has felt radically separated
from most of the ideas

565
00:39:07,598 --> 00:39:09,766
that seem to interest other people.

566
00:39:11,602 --> 00:39:14,438
You're getting a woman
who somewhere along the line,

567
00:39:14,521 --> 00:39:19,067
misplaced whatever slight faith
she had in the social contract...

568
00:39:20,444 --> 00:39:23,113
in the whole grand pattern of
human endeavor.

569
00:39:29,578 --> 00:39:32,748
I had better tell you where I am and why.

570
00:39:33,290 --> 00:39:38,086
I'm sitting in a high-ceilinged room in
the Royal Hawaiian hotel in Honolulu,

571
00:39:38,170 --> 00:39:42,216
watching the long translucent curtains
billow in the trade wind...

572
00:39:42,674 --> 00:39:45,511
and trying to put my life back together.

573
00:39:46,970 --> 00:39:49,932
My husband is here
and our daughter, age 3.

574
00:39:52,726 --> 00:39:55,896
We are here on this island
in the middle of the Pacific

575
00:39:55,979 --> 00:39:58,148
in lieu of filing for divorce.

576
00:40:01,235 --> 00:40:02,361
[Dunne] Did he read that?

577
00:40:02,444 --> 00:40:04,029
He edited that.

578
00:40:04,112 --> 00:40:07,533
He edited it? So, how does that--?
What was the--? Was it--?

579
00:40:07,616 --> 00:40:10,953
What was your agreement
about just writing about...

580
00:40:12,037 --> 00:40:14,122
your inner public life?

581
00:40:14,289 --> 00:40:16,375
It was-- We didn't have an agreement.

582
00:40:16,458 --> 00:40:17,960
We didn't have--

583
00:40:18,043 --> 00:40:21,922
We didn't see it as a deal,
you know... or a deal-breaker.

584
00:40:23,632 --> 00:40:24,466
Um...

585
00:40:27,886 --> 00:40:30,597
We thought, generally, that you--
You wrote what--

586
00:40:31,181 --> 00:40:34,142
You used your material.
You wrote what you had.

587
00:40:36,728 --> 00:40:39,398
That was what I happened
to have at the moment.

588
00:40:40,566 --> 00:40:41,608
At that moment.

589
00:40:50,158 --> 00:40:51,952
He rented an apartment in Vegas.

590
00:40:53,370 --> 00:40:55,038
It was a nightmare apartment.

591
00:40:56,081 --> 00:40:58,667
He never stayed in it.
He never spent one night.

592
00:40:59,543 --> 00:41:02,129
He would go over there,
and he would stay at--

593
00:41:03,046 --> 00:41:04,381
At a hotel.

594
00:41:07,134 --> 00:41:09,219
It was not a good time.

595
00:41:10,262 --> 00:41:12,556
Actually, it was a wonderful book,
it turned out.

596
00:41:23,817 --> 00:41:26,111
[Dunne] You and John were both
writing dark stuff?

597
00:41:26,195 --> 00:41:27,696
Well, it was a dark time.

598
00:41:35,787 --> 00:41:37,956
[Hare] She's in there, in the world,

599
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:40,542
and she's writing about
all sorts of ugly things.

600
00:41:41,335 --> 00:41:43,587
Look at Play It As It Lays.

601
00:41:43,670 --> 00:41:48,425
Yes, the style is a very refined style,
but the subject matter is not at all.

602
00:41:48,509 --> 00:41:52,429
And so there's this odd contrast
between subject matter and style.

603
00:41:55,516 --> 00:41:57,267
[woman] Maria drove the freeway.

604
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:01,188
She dressed every morning with
a greater sense of purpose

605
00:42:01,271 --> 00:42:04,358
than she had felt in some time,
for it was essential

606
00:42:04,441 --> 00:42:06,860
that she be on the freeway by ten o'clock.

607
00:42:08,111 --> 00:42:10,280
Not somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard,

608
00:42:10,364 --> 00:42:12,366
not on her way to the freeway,

609
00:42:12,866 --> 00:42:14,409
but actually on the freeway.

610
00:42:15,494 --> 00:42:18,372
If she was not, she lost the day's rhythm,

611
00:42:18,455 --> 00:42:21,041
its precariously imposed momentum.

612
00:42:22,793 --> 00:42:26,630
[Als] Maria is detached in the way
that a reporter is detached.

613
00:42:27,506 --> 00:42:30,634
Play It As It Lays is about
what Maria sees

614
00:42:30,717 --> 00:42:32,386
and what she feels

615
00:42:32,678 --> 00:42:35,389
which is... trying not to feel.

616
00:42:36,348 --> 00:42:38,600
Maria was quite a bit of myself.

617
00:42:40,227 --> 00:42:42,020
Obviously, not line for line.

618
00:42:45,983 --> 00:42:49,361
What Maria is going through in that book,
she is coming to terms

619
00:42:49,444 --> 00:42:51,905
with the meaninglessness of experience.

620
00:42:52,614 --> 00:42:55,158
That's what everybody
who lives in Los Angeles

621
00:42:55,242 --> 00:42:59,913
essentially has to come to terms with
because none of it seems to mean anything.

622
00:43:03,166 --> 00:43:06,044
Once we moved to the beach,
I felt particularly good.

623
00:43:07,504 --> 00:43:09,173
[Brokaw] Joan Didion lives hard by the sea

624
00:43:09,256 --> 00:43:11,842
about an hour's drive north
of Los Angeles.

625
00:43:11,925 --> 00:43:15,053
She shares life along
the coast of her native California

626
00:43:15,137 --> 00:43:18,390
with husband John Gregory Dunne,
who is also a writer.

627
00:43:25,272 --> 00:43:28,692
[Joan] The day would start with
John getting up and building a fire

628
00:43:28,775 --> 00:43:32,738
and making breakfast for Quintana
and taking her to school.

629
00:43:36,241 --> 00:43:38,994
Then I would get up, have a Coca-Cola

630
00:43:39,077 --> 00:43:40,829
and start work.

631
00:43:44,750 --> 00:43:46,668
Everybody had their own thing.

632
00:44:14,363 --> 00:44:16,198
[Brokaw] How important is it
to live here?

633
00:44:17,199 --> 00:44:18,867
I like to look at the horizon.

634
00:44:18,951 --> 00:44:20,869
I mean, that is nice.

635
00:44:21,620 --> 00:44:23,622
It is always there, flat.

636
00:44:24,206 --> 00:44:26,166
I like the way it feels here.

637
00:44:26,250 --> 00:44:29,837
[Brokaw] I got back to New York
from the interview and wrote to her.

638
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:33,799
I sent it to "Joan Didion,
somewhere in Malibu Beach."

639
00:44:33,882 --> 00:44:37,511
That was the address I had.
'Cause I didn't have anything with me.

640
00:44:37,678 --> 00:44:39,555
And she got it. [chuckles]

641
00:44:42,182 --> 00:44:44,643
[Ford] I was a carpenter
to do a renovation

642
00:44:44,726 --> 00:44:48,689
and expansion of their home in Malibu
overlooking the ocean.

643
00:44:49,481 --> 00:44:52,818
And I spent a couple of months there...

644
00:44:53,569 --> 00:44:57,197
in their house,
first thing in the morning, last thing.

645
00:44:58,031 --> 00:44:59,408
The end of every day...

646
00:44:59,908 --> 00:45:02,619
explaining why we hadn't
made more progress...

647
00:45:03,954 --> 00:45:06,290
and how it was gonna cost even more money.

648
00:45:08,584 --> 00:45:10,669
There was a room that was developed.

649
00:45:10,752 --> 00:45:12,629
And there were bookshelves.

650
00:45:14,798 --> 00:45:17,885
There were decks
and a wall of doors and windows.

651
00:45:21,722 --> 00:45:23,182
I had a young family.

652
00:45:23,265 --> 00:45:26,852
I think I became their carpenter
for the same reason I became

653
00:45:26,935 --> 00:45:28,937
their friend, is that I was, uh...

654
00:45:29,855 --> 00:45:31,064
out of my depth...

655
00:45:31,607 --> 00:45:32,649
kind of--

656
00:45:35,319 --> 00:45:37,988
Didn't know where I was going,
how I got there.

657
00:45:39,406 --> 00:45:41,700
Joan always had an Easter party.

658
00:45:43,076 --> 00:45:45,287
My family and I were always invited.

659
00:45:47,247 --> 00:45:50,209
I always felt
everyone there was smarter than I was

660
00:45:50,292 --> 00:45:51,960
and more cultured than I was.

661
00:45:52,836 --> 00:45:56,673
But I was always made to
feel welcome and comfortable.

662
00:45:59,092 --> 00:46:02,596
[Amy] It was not the way
you think of Malibu.

663
00:46:02,679 --> 00:46:04,556
It was very out there.

664
00:46:04,973 --> 00:46:06,391
It was far away.

665
00:46:06,475 --> 00:46:08,852
And it was shacks.

666
00:46:08,936 --> 00:46:11,563
And it was small houses.

667
00:46:11,647 --> 00:46:14,816
And it was people living very separately.

668
00:46:14,900 --> 00:46:17,444
And it was very...

669
00:46:18,779 --> 00:46:20,989
[chuckles] Joan.

670
00:46:23,450 --> 00:46:26,495
Everybody and their brother
showed up at this house.

671
00:46:26,578 --> 00:46:28,413
Brian De Palma,

672
00:46:28,497 --> 00:46:31,166
Steven Spielberg, Marty Scorsese,

673
00:46:31,250 --> 00:46:32,626
Warren Beatty.

674
00:46:32,709 --> 00:46:35,212
[Moore] Warren Beatty had
a tremendous crush on Joan.

675
00:46:36,255 --> 00:46:38,507
She was well aware of it, as was John.

676
00:46:38,590 --> 00:46:39,967
And John used to--

677
00:46:40,050 --> 00:46:42,219
John used to be very amused by it.

678
00:46:43,136 --> 00:46:45,973
And if I had a dinner party,
Warren would say to me,

679
00:46:46,056 --> 00:46:49,142
"Please, please, will you put me
next to Joan? Please."

680
00:46:50,227 --> 00:46:53,522
[Amy] It was a very hot atmosphere.

681
00:46:54,189 --> 00:46:56,149
I don't mean "hot" like "sex hot."

682
00:46:56,233 --> 00:46:59,319
I mean "hot" like... "creative hot."

683
00:46:59,778 --> 00:47:03,407
Everybody was talking movies.
Everybody was arguing about movies.

684
00:47:04,616 --> 00:47:08,370
John, being the great raconteur
that he was,

685
00:47:08,453 --> 00:47:11,957
he was gathering material,
and Joan was gathering material.

686
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:15,794
And they actually were
interested in what we thought.

687
00:47:15,878 --> 00:47:19,965
And they were interested
in, uh, the ideas that we had.

688
00:47:21,717 --> 00:47:24,136
Fade in. Interior subway, day.

689
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:28,891
The camera holds very tight on her face

690
00:47:28,974 --> 00:47:31,560
as she hangs from a strap
in the crowded subway.

691
00:47:31,935 --> 00:47:35,689
She looks ill, drawn,
scarcely able to cling to the strap.

692
00:47:49,244 --> 00:47:52,289
[Joan] I had read this book
by James Mills.

693
00:47:53,999 --> 00:47:57,419
It was developed from some pieces
he'd done in LIFE.

694
00:47:58,337 --> 00:48:01,173
It just immediately said "movie" to me.

695
00:48:02,549 --> 00:48:05,010
I had John read it and Nick.

696
00:48:06,595 --> 00:48:09,139
Each of the three of us put in $1000.

697
00:48:11,475 --> 00:48:13,852
You had to go to the producer and--

698
00:48:15,312 --> 00:48:17,481
And describe the movie in one sentence.

699
00:48:18,273 --> 00:48:21,568
And their sentence for
Panic in Needle Park was

700
00:48:21,944 --> 00:48:24,821
"It's Romeo and Juliet,
but they're junkies."

701
00:48:31,370 --> 00:48:34,039
[Dunne] When writing Play It As It Lays,
did you see it as a movie?

702
00:48:34,122 --> 00:48:36,416
You surprised it was made into a movie?

703
00:48:36,500 --> 00:48:39,670
No, I wasn't surprised that
it would be made into a movie.

704
00:48:39,753 --> 00:48:40,629
Um...

705
00:48:41,755 --> 00:48:43,882
I wish it was made
into a better movie.

706
00:48:43,966 --> 00:48:48,011
It was just different. It was different.
The characters were different.

707
00:48:48,470 --> 00:48:49,388
Uh...

708
00:48:50,264 --> 00:48:51,640
The point was different.

709
00:48:51,723 --> 00:48:54,977
Everything was different
even though I wrote the screenplay.

710
00:48:55,310 --> 00:48:56,937
[crowd laughing]

711
00:48:59,273 --> 00:49:02,818
[John] We work in films in an odd way.
One of us writes the first draft,

712
00:49:03,151 --> 00:49:06,280
and the other functions as really
kind of a super-editor

713
00:49:06,363 --> 00:49:08,198
and writes the second draft.

714
00:49:09,283 --> 00:49:12,953
In the end, you can't really
tell who has done what.

715
00:49:14,121 --> 00:49:18,375
Writing scripts allows us to do
other things. Writing scripts is also fun.

716
00:49:19,084 --> 00:49:22,963
[Trillin] I suppose if they had...
a religious belief,

717
00:49:23,046 --> 00:49:26,133
it was in the
Writers Guild medical insurance.

718
00:49:27,050 --> 00:49:30,429
They spoke about
the Writers Guild medical insurance

719
00:49:30,512 --> 00:49:33,140
almost in reverential tones.

720
00:49:33,557 --> 00:49:36,768
When they discussed it,
it was like in almost hushed tones.

721
00:49:36,852 --> 00:49:40,022
The Writers Guild, "Medical insurance.
Oh."

722
00:49:41,273 --> 00:49:44,985
[Brokaw] You've written fiction,
and you have written truth.

723
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:46,612
Why do you write films?

724
00:49:46,695 --> 00:49:49,239
I like it. It's fun.
It's not like writing.

725
00:49:49,489 --> 00:49:52,284
-Pays good money.
-It's like making notes for a, uh--

726
00:49:52,659 --> 00:49:54,328
Making notes for a director.

727
00:49:55,245 --> 00:49:56,288
It's a--

728
00:49:57,247 --> 00:49:59,291
It's an entirely other form of, uh--

729
00:50:01,251 --> 00:50:03,253
Of, uh, something to do.

730
00:50:03,670 --> 00:50:05,589
-It is.
-It also helps finance

731
00:50:05,672 --> 00:50:07,549
-what you really like to do.
-Yeah.

732
00:50:08,008 --> 00:50:10,260
-To write books.
-No doubt about that.

733
00:50:10,844 --> 00:50:13,722
This book, Book of Common Prayer,
is very complicated

734
00:50:13,805 --> 00:50:17,267
with a lot of layers,
and yet it all flows to a common point.

735
00:50:17,851 --> 00:50:21,897
When you write a book like that,
do you keep notes over a period of time

736
00:50:21,980 --> 00:50:26,527
and then begin to see
the story unfold in your mind?

737
00:50:26,985 --> 00:50:28,612
It unfolds as you write it.

738
00:50:29,363 --> 00:50:33,033
I mean, that's something I never believed
before I wrote a book...

739
00:50:33,116 --> 00:50:35,077
Um, but it does.

740
00:50:36,370 --> 00:50:39,039
[Wanger] Well, as you know,

741
00:50:39,122 --> 00:50:41,416
Joan's a complete perfectionist.

742
00:50:42,501 --> 00:50:46,171
If she's thinking about something
and feels she's stuck,

743
00:50:46,255 --> 00:50:47,840
she'll put it in the freezer.

744
00:50:48,966 --> 00:50:51,426
-Do you know that?
-[Dunne] That's not a metaphor?

745
00:50:51,510 --> 00:50:53,387
-That's--
-No, in the freezer.

746
00:50:54,096 --> 00:50:57,599
-She would put the book--?
-The manuscript in the freezer,

747
00:50:57,683 --> 00:51:00,561
in a bag, and, um, then go back to it.

748
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:09,027
[woman] The morning the FBI men
came to the house on California Street,

749
00:51:09,111 --> 00:51:11,029
Charlotte did not understand why.

750
00:51:12,072 --> 00:51:15,284
She had read newspaper accounts
of the events they recited,

751
00:51:15,450 --> 00:51:18,787
she listened attentively
to everything they said,

752
00:51:19,580 --> 00:51:23,458
but she could make no connection
between the pitiless revolutionist

753
00:51:23,542 --> 00:51:25,794
they described and her daughter Marin.

754
00:51:26,420 --> 00:51:30,382
Who, at 7, had stood on a chair
to make her own breakfast...

755
00:51:30,757 --> 00:51:33,969
and wept helplessly
when asked to clean her closet.

756
00:51:35,512 --> 00:51:36,346
Sweet Marin.

757
00:51:37,472 --> 00:51:40,851
Or so the two FBI men
tried to tell Charlotte.

758
00:51:43,562 --> 00:51:47,691
[Joan] I realized... some years after
A Book of Common Prayer was finished...

759
00:51:47,774 --> 00:51:48,734
[man] Mm-hm.

760
00:51:48,817 --> 00:51:51,403
[Joan] I realized that it was a--
That is was about my...

761
00:51:52,070 --> 00:51:55,115
anticipating Quintana was growing up.

762
00:51:56,575 --> 00:51:58,994
-I was anticipating separation.
-[man] Her leaving.

763
00:51:59,077 --> 00:52:01,955
Yeah, and so I was actually
working through...

764
00:52:02,706 --> 00:52:05,209
-that separation ahead of time.
-Mm-hm.

765
00:52:08,837 --> 00:52:12,508
So, novels are also about things
you're afraid you can't deal with.

766
00:52:16,929 --> 00:52:20,098
I realized Play It As It Lays
had been about mothers and daughters,

767
00:52:20,182 --> 00:52:24,478
on a certain level, as Common Prayer
is about a mother and a daughter...

768
00:52:25,938 --> 00:52:28,815
and the separation between them.

769
00:52:29,983 --> 00:52:32,694
In that sense that a novel
is a cautionary tale...

770
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:36,365
if you tell the story
and work it out all right,

771
00:52:36,448 --> 00:52:38,158
then it won't happen to you.

772
00:52:44,915 --> 00:52:48,168
[Als] After The White Album,
were you interested in moving away

773
00:52:48,460 --> 00:52:52,381
-from the personal into the larger world?
-[Joan] I was bored with it, yeah.

774
00:52:52,464 --> 00:52:54,216
I wanted to move into...

775
00:52:55,425 --> 00:52:57,845
stuff that was beginning to
interest me more.

776
00:53:00,097 --> 00:53:02,766
It was a hard transition to make
until I found...

777
00:53:03,267 --> 00:53:04,351
The New York Review.

778
00:53:07,020 --> 00:53:09,857
I asked her, I said, "How did you...

779
00:53:11,483 --> 00:53:14,820
start writing these pieces
about politics and...

780
00:53:15,445 --> 00:53:19,908
Salvador and Miami and so on, because
you talked about how insecure you were."

781
00:53:19,992 --> 00:53:22,286
She said, "Bob Silvers."

782
00:53:23,328 --> 00:53:27,040
That was her answer,
was that he gave her the confidence

783
00:53:27,124 --> 00:53:30,127
to not even question her doing it.

784
00:53:30,627 --> 00:53:34,464
[Silvers] I remember reading some
of her things, I believe, in LIFE magazine

785
00:53:34,548 --> 00:53:37,134
where she was a kind of
special correspondent,

786
00:53:37,217 --> 00:53:40,012
and I thought, "What a fresh... voice."

787
00:53:40,095 --> 00:53:42,472
[Dunne] But she hadn't written about
domestic politics

788
00:53:42,556 --> 00:53:44,391
or from war zones before.

789
00:53:44,558 --> 00:53:46,476
How did you know she could do that?

790
00:53:46,560 --> 00:53:49,521
Well, just from talking to her
and reading her work,

791
00:53:49,605 --> 00:53:53,108
I saw that she was
immensely knowledgeable, perceptive.

792
00:53:54,067 --> 00:53:55,235
A sharp observer.

793
00:53:55,944 --> 00:53:59,948
And I wanted to know,
as a matter of my own curiosity

794
00:54:00,032 --> 00:54:03,285
as an editor and as a friend,
what she thought.

795
00:54:04,286 --> 00:54:05,996
[Joan] Have you ever visited a morgue?

796
00:54:06,246 --> 00:54:09,333
I remember spending some time
in the L.A. County morgue,

797
00:54:09,416 --> 00:54:13,962
and immediately the minute you walk in,
you make an accommodation so that...

798
00:54:15,172 --> 00:54:18,133
if a body suddenly presents itself to you

799
00:54:18,217 --> 00:54:20,302
or touches you, you're not going to--

800
00:54:20,969 --> 00:54:24,848
Or if you have to watch an autopsy,
you're not going to get sick. Um...

801
00:54:25,682 --> 00:54:28,477
And I think that's what's
happened in El Salvador.

802
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:30,562
It's quite a brutalizing experience.

803
00:54:36,068 --> 00:54:38,737
[Silvers] There was a--
This awful civil war in Salvador.

804
00:54:40,322 --> 00:54:43,825
The Americans were supporting
a very, very brutal...

805
00:54:44,826 --> 00:54:45,911
terrible government.

806
00:54:47,329 --> 00:54:50,582
We talked about it
and the idea was that she would go there.

807
00:54:50,666 --> 00:54:51,959
She wanted to go there.

808
00:54:52,543 --> 00:54:54,253
She wanted to get in on that.

809
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:58,423
[Joan] You'd pick up the paper
and these horror stories would be there

810
00:54:58,507 --> 00:55:01,260
and you kind of had to
get to the bottom of them.

811
00:55:02,135 --> 00:55:04,221
-[Dunne] Was it dangerous?
-What, El Salvador?

812
00:55:05,430 --> 00:55:09,184
It-- It was the most dangerous place
I've ever-- I ever hope to be.

813
00:55:09,393 --> 00:55:11,228
I mean, it was terrifying.

814
00:55:18,277 --> 00:55:21,196
I had never covered American politics.

815
00:55:22,906 --> 00:55:26,952
It simply was outside
my whole interest range.

816
00:55:33,417 --> 00:55:35,752
It seemed to exist
only to maintain itself.

817
00:55:36,128 --> 00:55:38,672
I mean, it didn't seem to have
any relationship

818
00:55:38,797 --> 00:55:41,800
with the people
who hung around gas stations.

819
00:55:41,884 --> 00:55:44,887
It didn't seem to connect
with the rest of the country.

820
00:55:52,561 --> 00:55:55,272
[woman] They tend to speak
a language common in Washington

821
00:55:55,355 --> 00:55:57,941
but not specifically shared
by the rest of us.

822
00:56:01,904 --> 00:56:04,698
They talk about programs and policy

823
00:56:04,781 --> 00:56:07,826
and how to implement them.
Or about trade-offs

824
00:56:07,910 --> 00:56:11,079
and constituencies
and positioning the candidate...

825
00:56:11,705 --> 00:56:13,457
and distancing the candidate...

826
00:56:15,209 --> 00:56:17,878
about the story and how it will play.

827
00:56:19,630 --> 00:56:23,842
They speak of a candidate's performance,
by which they usually mean his skill

828
00:56:23,926 --> 00:56:25,636
at circumventing questions.

829
00:56:26,053 --> 00:56:29,014
Not as citizens,
but as professional insiders...

830
00:56:29,598 --> 00:56:33,101
attuned to signals pitched
beyond the range of normal hearing.

831
00:56:37,356 --> 00:56:39,274
[Silvers] Her piece on Cheney...

832
00:56:40,150 --> 00:56:42,861
is enormously foreseeing...

833
00:56:43,862 --> 00:56:45,239
of the whole course...

834
00:56:45,697 --> 00:56:48,325
of Bush politics and the Iraq war.

835
00:56:51,870 --> 00:56:55,207
She undertook to write
about the Bush administration,

836
00:56:55,290 --> 00:56:58,669
the Bush war and, above all,
Cheney, who she saw...

837
00:56:59,503 --> 00:57:01,713
as a decisive...

838
00:57:02,673 --> 00:57:03,590
and bullying...

839
00:57:04,299 --> 00:57:08,762
and really quite brilliantly evil figure.

840
00:57:11,598 --> 00:57:14,768
[woman] Cheney reached public life
with every reason to believe

841
00:57:14,852 --> 00:57:18,230
that he would continue
to both court failure and overcome it.

842
00:57:19,398 --> 00:57:24,152
Take the lemons he seemed determined to
pick for himself and make the lemonade...

843
00:57:26,405 --> 00:57:27,281
then spill it...

844
00:57:29,700 --> 00:57:31,618
then let somebody else clean it up.

845
00:57:40,961 --> 00:57:44,339
"Wilding." New York City police say
that's new teenage slang

846
00:57:44,423 --> 00:57:48,468
for rampaging in wolf packs,
attacking people just for the fun of it.

847
00:57:50,095 --> 00:57:53,599
[woman] A woman jogging in New York's
Central Park last Wednesday night,

848
00:57:53,682 --> 00:57:55,517
raped and nearly beaten to death.

849
00:57:55,851 --> 00:57:58,478
She is a white
Wall Street investment banker.

850
00:57:59,104 --> 00:58:02,941
Police said the youths were joking
about the crime in their jail cell.

851
00:58:03,775 --> 00:58:06,612
[Dunne] What drew you
to the Central Park jogger case?

852
00:58:06,695 --> 00:58:09,072
[Joan]
Oh, it was just a natural story for me.

853
00:58:09,156 --> 00:58:10,782
Everything about that story...

854
00:58:12,409 --> 00:58:13,327
was a lie.

855
00:58:14,036 --> 00:58:18,248
She was deeply suspicious
about how everyone was leaping into this--

856
00:58:20,167 --> 00:58:23,462
These-- This double image
of evil and good.

857
00:58:23,545 --> 00:58:25,255
To understand is to forgive.

858
00:58:25,631 --> 00:58:28,759
I don't wanna understand what motivates

859
00:58:28,842 --> 00:58:32,304
someone, uh, to engage
in this kind of horror.

860
00:58:32,387 --> 00:58:35,349
Calling us animals
is not going to get problems solved

861
00:58:35,432 --> 00:58:39,436
-and this is what we want to do.
-You better believe I hate the people

862
00:58:39,811 --> 00:58:42,731
that took this girl
and raped her brutally.

863
00:58:42,814 --> 00:58:44,024
You better believe it.

864
00:58:49,363 --> 00:58:51,823
[Als] One vision, shared by those

865
00:58:52,241 --> 00:58:54,785
who had seized upon
the attack on the jogger

866
00:58:55,118 --> 00:58:58,830
as an exact representation
of what was wrong with the city...

867
00:58:59,540 --> 00:59:04,628
was of a city systematically ruined,
violated, raped by its underclass.

868
00:59:06,004 --> 00:59:09,675
The opposing vision, shared by those
who had seized upon the arrest

869
00:59:09,758 --> 00:59:12,970
of the defendants
as an exact representation

870
00:59:13,345 --> 00:59:15,389
of their own victimization,

871
00:59:15,556 --> 00:59:19,560
was of a city in which the powerless
had been systematically ruined,

872
00:59:19,768 --> 00:59:22,145
violated, raped by the powerful.

873
00:59:25,190 --> 00:59:28,485
I was just this kid living in Flatbush...

874
00:59:28,735 --> 00:59:31,780
um, reading these very elegant words.

875
00:59:32,364 --> 00:59:36,743
When you're on that side of being
described based on your skin color,

876
00:59:36,827 --> 00:59:38,745
you read very cynically.

877
00:59:39,746 --> 00:59:43,917
And so I read reports
in the New York Post, the Daily News,

878
00:59:44,001 --> 00:59:48,213
TheNew York Times, very cynically.
And it was almost as if I was waiting...

879
00:59:48,547 --> 00:59:51,967
for Joan to write the piece
that I needed to read.

880
00:59:52,467 --> 00:59:55,637
Um... Because it was something that...

881
00:59:56,805 --> 01:00:00,809
any reasonable person,
once they had stripped--

882
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:05,355
Um, as she would say,
the narrative of its rhetoric--

883
01:00:05,439 --> 01:00:09,568
Um, the story was of old grievances,
right?

884
01:00:09,651 --> 01:00:11,737
Old political grievances in the city.

885
01:00:23,916 --> 01:00:28,045
[Joan] I, myself, have always found
that if I examine something,

886
01:00:28,462 --> 01:00:29,505
it's less scary.

887
01:00:31,006 --> 01:00:34,927
We always had this theory that
if you kept a snake in your eye line...

888
01:00:35,302 --> 01:00:37,054
the snake wasn't gonna bite you.

889
01:00:38,180 --> 01:00:39,556
That's kind of the way...

890
01:00:40,766 --> 01:00:43,393
I feel about confronting pain.

891
01:00:44,895 --> 01:00:46,271
I wanna know where it is.

892
01:00:49,483 --> 01:00:51,944
[woman] The doctor told you,
"John, the ticker's bad"?

893
01:00:52,027 --> 01:00:54,321
The ticker is bad and that I was

894
01:00:54,404 --> 01:00:57,866
a candidate
for a cardiovascular catastrophe.

895
01:00:58,242 --> 01:01:02,496
And, uh, so, it tends to focus
and concentrate the mind very well,

896
01:01:02,579 --> 01:01:04,164
so, I began to think about...

897
01:01:05,332 --> 01:01:09,419
who I was, how I got to this point
and how it affected my life as a writer.

898
01:01:15,801 --> 01:01:17,553
[Dunne] What made you move to New York?

899
01:01:18,387 --> 01:01:19,555
[Joan] John wanted to move.

900
01:01:21,223 --> 01:01:23,058
He was restless.

901
01:01:23,642 --> 01:01:25,143
He felt as if he was stale.

902
01:01:25,978 --> 01:01:28,397
His plan was to spend
more time in New York.

903
01:01:31,817 --> 01:01:33,485
[Dunne] You have a little resentment?

904
01:01:33,569 --> 01:01:36,613
[Joan] Actually, we never had
any of those feelings.

905
01:01:37,197 --> 01:01:40,200
People found it hard to believe,
but neither John nor I

906
01:01:40,284 --> 01:01:42,619
was ever jealous of the other's work.

907
01:01:45,581 --> 01:01:47,791
[Trillin]
I was happy to see him back in New York.

908
01:01:50,210 --> 01:01:55,465
His exercise was walking
in Central Park in the mornings.

909
01:01:59,970 --> 01:02:03,640
Sometimes he'd picked up,
not only the gossip from the dinner party

910
01:02:03,724 --> 01:02:08,145
the night before, but the gossip from
whoever he ran into in Central Park.

911
01:02:10,105 --> 01:02:11,940
[Dunne]
John would roll his calls every morning

912
01:02:12,024 --> 01:02:14,401
with fresh gossip
to a group of his friends.

913
01:02:15,611 --> 01:02:19,656
And if any one of us had gossip for him,
he would yell "Joan, pick up!"

914
01:02:20,282 --> 01:02:22,451
Even though her office was next door.

915
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:26,955
But if he did that...
the gossip had to be really good.

916
01:02:30,792 --> 01:02:33,795
[Trillin] When my wife was alive,
we were couple friends.

917
01:02:35,422 --> 01:02:37,299
We often went to dinner with them.

918
01:02:44,348 --> 01:02:46,517
Among all the married couples I knew...

919
01:02:47,184 --> 01:02:50,521
they were the ones
who were almost always together.

920
01:02:51,813 --> 01:02:52,731
I always said...

921
01:02:54,107 --> 01:02:57,277
they--
They're the sort of married couple that...

922
01:02:58,654 --> 01:03:00,447
finished each other's sentences.

923
01:03:00,531 --> 01:03:04,618
Although, John finishes Joan's sentences

924
01:03:04,701 --> 01:03:06,995
more than Joan finishes John's sentences.

925
01:03:07,829 --> 01:03:10,582
When you talked to them on the phone,
you realized

926
01:03:10,791 --> 01:03:13,252
they were just sitting
across from each other.

927
01:03:15,963 --> 01:03:19,591
[Joan] People often said that he
finished sentences for me, well, he did.

928
01:03:20,926 --> 01:03:22,719
He was between me and the world.

929
01:03:23,762 --> 01:03:27,307
He not only answered the telephone,
he finished my sentences.

930
01:03:28,517 --> 01:03:31,436
He was the baffle between me
and the world at large.

931
01:03:38,944 --> 01:03:41,822
You know how children are,
they always feel left out.

932
01:03:45,158 --> 01:03:49,413
Once, we talked about
what kind of mother I had been, and...

933
01:03:50,706 --> 01:03:52,124
she, to my surprise...

934
01:03:52,916 --> 01:03:55,752
said, "You were okay,
but you were a little remote."

935
01:03:58,213 --> 01:04:01,842
I didn't think this at the time.
I didn't see how it was possible,

936
01:04:01,925 --> 01:04:04,636
because her father and I
so clearly needed her.

937
01:04:09,349 --> 01:04:13,145
Which is kind of the way
we tend to deal with our children.

938
01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:20,360
Later, we realized that maybe
we haven't been listening to them at all.

939
01:04:23,614 --> 01:04:27,284
We'd been listening to the very edge
of what they say...

940
01:04:28,035 --> 01:04:29,953
without letting it sink in.

941
01:04:36,210 --> 01:04:39,421
-[Dunne] And Q got married.
-[Joan] Mm-hm.

942
01:04:39,505 --> 01:04:41,882
[Dunne] How soon after they met
did they get married?

943
01:04:42,007 --> 01:04:42,841
[Joan] Quite soon.

944
01:04:43,675 --> 01:04:45,886
I wonder if you were
concerned about her.

945
01:04:45,969 --> 01:04:47,513
We were concerned about her.

946
01:04:48,639 --> 01:04:49,473
But...

947
01:04:50,599 --> 01:04:53,268
not so much that she was getting married.

948
01:04:54,353 --> 01:04:57,022
That seemed like--
At that moment, it seemed like

949
01:04:57,105 --> 01:04:59,733
a good... thing for her to do.

950
01:05:03,987 --> 01:05:06,573
What was--?
What more were you concerned about?

951
01:05:06,990 --> 01:05:10,369
I was concerned because she was
drinking too much. That was...

952
01:05:11,453 --> 01:05:12,412
the first concern.

953
01:05:15,582 --> 01:05:19,253
[Susan] She called me and said, you know,
"I-- I-- Susan, I-- I have this--

954
01:05:19,378 --> 01:05:21,046
I have a new boyfriend."

955
01:05:21,630 --> 01:05:24,550
And I said,
"Oh, wow, well, that's fantastic."

956
01:05:24,633 --> 01:05:28,470
And she said, "Oh, my God, he's--
He's just amazing and I'm so happy,"

957
01:05:28,554 --> 01:05:31,390
and I said, "Well, where--?
Where did you meet him?"

958
01:05:32,140 --> 01:05:35,686
She said, "You're not gonna like it."
And I said, "Well, what?"

959
01:05:35,769 --> 01:05:40,315
She said, "Well, he works at
a bar down-- That I go to sometimes."

960
01:05:41,692 --> 01:05:46,321
"My parents love him, my dad--
They're really happy for me."

961
01:05:47,322 --> 01:05:49,575
She said,
"If you take this away from me,

962
01:05:49,658 --> 01:05:52,744
this is the greatest thing
that has ever happened to me.

963
01:05:52,828 --> 01:05:55,497
I really--
I don't even think I can-- I can...

964
01:05:57,499 --> 01:05:58,584
talk to you...

965
01:06:00,043 --> 01:06:02,087
if you can't be happy for me."

966
01:06:33,243 --> 01:06:36,997
[Lynn] Oh, they were so pleased and happy,
and Quintana looked so happy.

967
01:06:39,124 --> 01:06:43,420
Everything seemed to be going so well,
and then we all,

968
01:06:43,504 --> 01:06:47,925
you know, trooped over
to the parish part of the house

969
01:06:48,008 --> 01:06:49,718
for a little wedding reception.

970
01:07:01,772 --> 01:07:04,483
[Joan] We wished them happiness,
we wished them health...

971
01:07:05,192 --> 01:07:08,403
we wished them love
and luck and beautiful children.

972
01:07:17,287 --> 01:07:21,667
On that wedding day, July 26th, 2003...

973
01:07:22,501 --> 01:07:25,754
we could see no reason to think
that such ordinary blessings

974
01:07:25,838 --> 01:07:27,256
would not come their way.

975
01:07:29,007 --> 01:07:30,008
Do notice...

976
01:07:30,717 --> 01:07:33,971
we still counted happiness
and health and love and luck

977
01:07:34,054 --> 01:07:37,015
and beautiful children
as ordinary blessings.

978
01:07:46,191 --> 01:07:50,237
Quintana had been too sick
on Christmas Eve to come to dinner.

979
01:07:51,613 --> 01:07:56,159
In the morning she called
and said she could hardly breathe.

980
01:07:57,244 --> 01:08:00,080
She had gone to the emergency room
the night before,

981
01:08:00,163 --> 01:08:02,332
but it was back again.

982
01:08:03,333 --> 01:08:05,460
By the time she got to the hospital...

983
01:08:06,628 --> 01:08:08,964
she was in need of dramatic care.

984
01:08:10,757 --> 01:08:12,342
She was very near death then.

985
01:08:13,760 --> 01:08:17,639
Quintana had been taken in with--
With something that seemed...

986
01:08:18,974 --> 01:08:22,269
not that serious, like the flu, or--
Or something like that.

987
01:08:22,352 --> 01:08:26,023
But it had quickly developed into--
Into something else, and she...

988
01:08:26,440 --> 01:08:27,357
um...

989
01:08:27,649 --> 01:08:29,735
was in the ICU, and she was--

990
01:08:29,818 --> 01:08:33,655
She had a tube down her throat
for breathing and-- And, um...

991
01:08:35,115 --> 01:08:35,991
Um...

992
01:08:36,617 --> 01:08:38,577
So, when-- And John...

993
01:08:39,912 --> 01:08:43,874
talked about all that,
and talked about it in detail, but, um...

994
01:08:43,957 --> 01:08:48,962
His voice just sounded different
from any time I'd ever heard it.

995
01:08:49,046 --> 01:08:52,716
John's voice just started to break
and I've-- I've never...

996
01:08:53,342 --> 01:08:54,301
um...

997
01:08:56,178 --> 01:08:58,639
I had never heard him like that.

998
01:08:58,722 --> 01:09:01,558
He was sobbing and saying, you know,

999
01:09:01,642 --> 01:09:04,311
"Quintana is so sick, I just don't know--

1000
01:09:04,394 --> 01:09:05,896
I'm just so worried."

1001
01:09:10,943 --> 01:09:11,985
[Joan] We sat down.

1002
01:09:12,569 --> 01:09:14,696
My attention was on mixing the salad.

1003
01:09:15,364 --> 01:09:17,324
John was talking, then he wasn't.

1004
01:09:18,742 --> 01:09:21,745
His left hand was raised
and he was slumped motionless.

1005
01:09:23,372 --> 01:09:25,290
I remember saying, "Don't do that."

1006
01:09:26,625 --> 01:09:30,796
When he did not respond, my first thought
was he started to eat and choked.

1007
01:09:31,505 --> 01:09:34,591
I remember trying to lift him
from the back of the chair

1008
01:09:34,675 --> 01:09:36,051
to give him the Heimlich.

1009
01:09:36,844 --> 01:09:39,304
I remember the sense of his weight
as he fell.

1010
01:09:39,388 --> 01:09:41,723
First against the table,
then to the floor.

1011
01:09:43,308 --> 01:09:45,352
[Lynn] That night I got a call saying...

1012
01:09:46,436 --> 01:09:50,607
"Listen, uh, I just spoke to Nick Dunne,
I have something terrible to tell you."

1013
01:09:50,691 --> 01:09:53,151
And I said, "Oh, my God, Quintana died."

1014
01:09:54,111 --> 01:09:57,614
And she paused and she said,
"No, not Quintana, but John."

1015
01:10:00,534 --> 01:10:02,077
[Joan] On the night that he died...

1016
01:10:02,536 --> 01:10:03,579
I came back here.

1017
01:10:05,372 --> 01:10:07,416
There was... not much--

1018
01:10:08,792 --> 01:10:12,462
There was not much else to--
To do, you know? I called your father.

1019
01:10:13,255 --> 01:10:14,965
That was the first thing I did.

1020
01:10:16,592 --> 01:10:17,467
And...

1021
01:10:19,428 --> 01:10:22,639
I had that obligatory conversation and...

1022
01:10:24,308 --> 01:10:25,184
then...

1023
01:10:28,145 --> 01:10:28,979
that was it.

1024
01:10:34,234 --> 01:10:37,404
[Tony] After John died, you know,
it was-- It was like a--

1025
01:10:38,572 --> 01:10:40,866
It wasn't like an Irish wake,
it was like a Shiva.

1026
01:10:41,575 --> 01:10:44,286
There were people at the house...

1027
01:10:45,871 --> 01:10:48,207
all the time,
until you told them to leave.

1028
01:10:49,958 --> 01:10:52,669
[Trillin] I was up there a lot
for the next couple of weeks.

1029
01:10:53,253 --> 01:10:56,215
Her daughter was in--
Still in intensive care and--

1030
01:10:56,298 --> 01:10:57,674
And John was gone.

1031
01:10:59,301 --> 01:11:02,638
And I remember we were
all concerned she wouldn't eat and I--

1032
01:11:04,181 --> 01:11:06,099
I found that she would eat congee.

1033
01:11:06,975 --> 01:11:10,187
Uh, so, I would go to Chinatown
and get congee,

1034
01:11:10,270 --> 01:11:13,357
which is sort of a-- A rice porridge.

1035
01:11:14,149 --> 01:11:17,653
And finally she said, "Calvin,
I think we've had enough congee."

1036
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:22,824
[Tony] By that time,
I had gotten married to Rosemary.

1037
01:11:23,825 --> 01:11:25,869
We lived around the corner.

1038
01:11:26,578 --> 01:11:30,040
Often, Rosemary would come over,
but this particular night...

1039
01:11:30,457 --> 01:11:31,542
uh...

1040
01:11:31,625 --> 01:11:33,794
which I think was fairly early in the--

1041
01:11:34,628 --> 01:11:35,462
In the going...

1042
01:11:36,046 --> 01:11:39,258
we went into, uh, John's office

1043
01:11:39,842 --> 01:11:41,844
and Joan opened one of the closets.

1044
01:11:42,261 --> 01:11:45,430
She was just standing there,
thinking for a while.

1045
01:11:46,014 --> 01:11:50,394
I'm looking at all this stuff assuming
we're both thinking the same thing,

1046
01:11:50,477 --> 01:11:53,355
that you have to
get rid of these clothes eventually.

1047
01:11:55,107 --> 01:11:57,234
She said, "But what if he comes back?"

1048
01:11:59,570 --> 01:12:00,404
And...

1049
01:12:01,989 --> 01:12:04,032
all I remember is that...

1050
01:12:05,409 --> 01:12:08,829
at that moment,
it didn't seem far-fetched to me at all.

1051
01:12:10,163 --> 01:12:11,874
In fact, it seemed plausible.

1052
01:12:14,126 --> 01:12:16,587
[Susan] There couldn't be
a funeral for John

1053
01:12:16,670 --> 01:12:19,339
until Quintana was well enough
to go to it.

1054
01:12:19,965 --> 01:12:21,925
For the funeral she was not--

1055
01:12:23,260 --> 01:12:26,013
You know, she didn't seem too strong.

1056
01:12:26,430 --> 01:12:28,056
-Yeah.
-You know, then.

1057
01:12:28,849 --> 01:12:29,683
And, uh...

1058
01:12:31,393 --> 01:12:34,354
you know, she made a plan to--
To go to Los Angeles...

1059
01:12:34,938 --> 01:12:36,857
-the next day.
-I hate to say,

1060
01:12:36,940 --> 01:12:40,986
but I encouraged her to go to Los Angeles,
I thought it'd be good for her.

1061
01:12:44,114 --> 01:12:45,657
I mean, I was totally wrong.

1062
01:12:48,744 --> 01:12:51,455
On the other hand,
it could've been a pretty idea.

1063
01:12:51,538 --> 01:12:52,956
The day in Malibu, right?

1064
01:12:53,540 --> 01:12:54,541
But it wasn't.

1065
01:12:55,375 --> 01:12:57,920
[Dunne] That's what she wanted?
To go to Malibu where--

1066
01:12:58,003 --> 01:12:58,837
[Joan] Yeah.

1067
01:12:59,046 --> 01:13:01,089
[Dunne] Where she was raised.
Yeah, of course.

1068
01:13:02,841 --> 01:13:05,969
She came off the plane
and fell and hit her head and--

1069
01:13:06,512 --> 01:13:08,805
You know, she thought she was okay and--

1070
01:13:08,889 --> 01:13:11,058
-As those kind of brain injuries,
-[Dunne] Mm-hm.

1071
01:13:11,141 --> 01:13:12,559
suddenly, she wasn't okay.

1072
01:13:14,728 --> 01:13:17,439
[Dunne] The fall at the airport
sent Quintana into a coma.

1073
01:13:19,316 --> 01:13:21,360
Two years of rehabilitation followed,

1074
01:13:21,818 --> 01:13:24,404
but at the end,
she lost her will to fight back

1075
01:13:24,488 --> 01:13:26,281
and her health rapidly declined.

1076
01:13:29,159 --> 01:13:31,328
That summer, she just finally let go.

1077
01:13:47,344 --> 01:13:50,889
[Joan] Grief turns out to be a place
none of us know until we reach it.

1078
01:14:01,400 --> 01:14:03,819
We know that someone
close to us could die.

1079
01:14:05,070 --> 01:14:06,905
We might expect to feel shock.

1080
01:14:09,241 --> 01:14:11,785
We do not expect this shock
to be obliterative,

1081
01:14:11,869 --> 01:14:14,371
dislocating to both body and mind.

1082
01:14:21,295 --> 01:14:23,922
We might expect to be prostrate,

1083
01:14:24,506 --> 01:14:27,176
inconsolable, crazy with loss.

1084
01:14:28,760 --> 01:14:31,096
We do not expect to be literally crazy.

1085
01:14:31,680 --> 01:14:36,018
Cool customers who believe their husband
is about to return and need his shoes.

1086
01:14:37,978 --> 01:14:42,065
Nor can we know the unending absence
that follows, the void...

1087
01:14:44,234 --> 01:14:47,863
the relentless succession of moments
during which we will confront

1088
01:14:47,946 --> 01:14:50,782
the experience of meaninglessness itself.

1089
01:15:03,378 --> 01:15:05,297
The reason I had to write it down

1090
01:15:05,380 --> 01:15:07,799
was nobody had ever told me
what it was like.

1091
01:15:10,844 --> 01:15:16,099
It was a coping mechanism, it turned out,
but I didn't plan it that way.

1092
01:15:21,188 --> 01:15:23,315
[Wanger] The manuscript
kind of just showed up.

1093
01:15:26,818 --> 01:15:31,615
I knew she was working on something,
but she doesn't really talk about

1094
01:15:31,698 --> 01:15:32,908
what she's working on.

1095
01:15:35,994 --> 01:15:39,665
I took it home, and, well,
you can imagine, it was--

1096
01:15:39,957 --> 01:15:42,835
It was an incredible thing and unexpected.

1097
01:15:43,669 --> 01:15:44,545
Uh...

1098
01:15:45,128 --> 01:15:47,840
And I--
I think she felt she had to do this.

1099
01:15:47,923 --> 01:15:52,219
This was-- She had to kind of get it down
to understand it...

1100
01:15:53,595 --> 01:15:57,140
as what-- But it was amazing
the two events happening, you know?

1101
01:15:57,224 --> 01:15:58,559
John and then Quintana.

1102
01:15:58,642 --> 01:16:01,228
And, of course,
Quintana is not in the book,

1103
01:16:01,311 --> 01:16:04,815
even though she had died that August

1104
01:16:04,898 --> 01:16:06,525
and I got the book in October.

1105
01:16:09,862 --> 01:16:11,738
[Hare] It's the first book about grief...

1106
01:16:12,948 --> 01:16:14,157
not by a believer.

1107
01:16:16,785 --> 01:16:20,873
Joan Didion, goodness knows,
believes in human achievement.

1108
01:16:23,250 --> 01:16:26,420
For someone with that perspective
to write about coming up

1109
01:16:26,503 --> 01:16:30,174
against this great big wall of loss,

1110
01:16:30,340 --> 01:16:35,053
void, the person she loved
most in the world disappearing...

1111
01:16:36,221 --> 01:16:38,640
speaks to a whole section of people

1112
01:16:38,724 --> 01:16:43,645
who have had nothing to read
at all on that subject.

1113
01:16:45,355 --> 01:16:47,274
[Tony] Who knows what to do
or how to do it?

1114
01:16:48,192 --> 01:16:52,696
You could be grieving your wife,
who died a month ago...

1115
01:16:54,531 --> 01:16:57,618
and everybody else has moved on...

1116
01:16:59,453 --> 01:17:01,830
and everything is normal.

1117
01:17:02,873 --> 01:17:06,210
A matter of months has gone by,
and I guess

1118
01:17:06,293 --> 01:17:08,670
you're supposed to be just normal.

1119
01:17:14,593 --> 01:17:18,722
[Als] Again, she wasn't writing
through the haze of romanticism...

1120
01:17:21,183 --> 01:17:25,521
she was writing through
the deeply felt poignancy

1121
01:17:25,604 --> 01:17:29,066
of someone who could report on grief.

1122
01:17:34,738 --> 01:17:38,659
It's the hardest thing to write about.
She did it as a reporter.

1123
01:17:44,248 --> 01:17:47,501
She did it as the quote-unquote
"the Joan Didion" character

1124
01:17:47,584 --> 01:17:50,879
of the novels in a true story about grief.

1125
01:17:52,422 --> 01:17:54,883
[Joan] I think the hardest thing
was finishing it.

1126
01:17:54,967 --> 01:17:57,344
Because,
for as long as I was writing it...

1127
01:17:58,011 --> 01:18:00,514
I was in touch with him
in some way, you know?

1128
01:18:03,517 --> 01:18:05,227
[Rose] And when you finished the book?

1129
01:18:12,276 --> 01:18:14,820
[Joan] "We all know
that if we are to live, ourselves,

1130
01:18:14,903 --> 01:18:17,739
there comes a time
when we must relinquish our dead.

1131
01:18:18,115 --> 01:18:19,992
Let them go, keep them dead.

1132
01:18:20,784 --> 01:18:22,327
Let go of them in the water.

1133
01:18:24,746 --> 01:18:27,124
Let them become
the photograph on the table.

1134
01:18:30,919 --> 01:18:34,882
Knowing this does not make it any easier
to let go of them in the water.

1135
01:18:39,052 --> 01:18:42,431
I did not want the year
after either of them died to end.

1136
01:18:46,768 --> 01:18:50,105
I knew that as the second year began
and the days passed,

1137
01:18:50,189 --> 01:18:51,732
certain things would happen.

1138
01:18:55,903 --> 01:18:59,072
My image of them at the moment of death
would be something

1139
01:18:59,156 --> 01:19:00,782
that happened in another year.

1140
01:19:02,659 --> 01:19:06,747
My sense of John and Quintana themselves,
John and Quintana alive...

1141
01:19:07,372 --> 01:19:08,916
would become more remote...

1142
01:19:10,042 --> 01:19:10,959
softened...

1143
01:19:11,293 --> 01:19:15,172
transmuted into whatever
best served my life without them.

1144
01:19:17,007 --> 01:19:19,134
In fact, this is already happening.

1145
01:19:21,178 --> 01:19:23,514
For once in your life, just let it go."

1146
01:19:42,032 --> 01:19:42,866
[Dunne] Hey.

1147
01:19:44,660 --> 01:19:46,870
Look how much soup you have.

1148
01:19:47,162 --> 01:19:49,373
-Who makes all this for you?
-What soup?

1149
01:19:49,456 --> 01:19:50,916
All this, isn't that soup?

1150
01:19:53,335 --> 01:19:54,503
No, that's ice cream.

1151
01:19:56,046 --> 01:20:00,592
Griffin feels the need to report he's been
getting calls from concerned friends.

1152
01:20:01,635 --> 01:20:05,389
The focus of their concern is my health,
specifically my weight.

1153
01:20:07,266 --> 01:20:11,186
I point out that I have weighed
the same amount since the early 1970's.

1154
01:20:12,437 --> 01:20:14,565
Griffin says that he recognizes this.

1155
01:20:16,191 --> 01:20:19,361
He is only reporting
what those concerned friends

1156
01:20:19,444 --> 01:20:20,654
have mentioned to him.

1157
01:20:23,907 --> 01:20:28,370
I had been thinking that maybe it was time
to do something totally new...

1158
01:20:28,912 --> 01:20:31,206
and it might be interesting to do a play.

1159
01:20:33,542 --> 01:20:37,629
So... I had some conversations
with David Hare.

1160
01:20:39,381 --> 01:20:41,300
[Hare] When we came to make a play...

1161
01:20:41,884 --> 01:20:43,677
faced with two problems:

1162
01:20:43,760 --> 01:20:45,804
One, she had never written a play.

1163
01:20:46,388 --> 01:20:49,391
But, secondly,
we were faced with the very real problem

1164
01:20:49,474 --> 01:20:54,479
that Quintana, her daughter,
had died since the book was written.

1165
01:20:54,813 --> 01:20:57,691
And whereas the book
was about grief for her husband,

1166
01:20:57,941 --> 01:20:59,943
since then, her daughter had died.

1167
01:21:00,485 --> 01:21:03,697
And so, I was faced with the unhappy task

1168
01:21:03,780 --> 01:21:04,865
of saying to Joan...

1169
01:21:05,657 --> 01:21:08,035
that she would have to open up

1170
01:21:08,368 --> 01:21:12,456
about material which is not
in the book, but which--

1171
01:21:12,539 --> 01:21:14,041
Which would be in the play

1172
01:21:14,249 --> 01:21:17,586
and about which at the time,
she had no intention of writing.

1173
01:21:18,295 --> 01:21:21,298
But one of the wonderful things
about working with Joan

1174
01:21:21,381 --> 01:21:26,220
is that she doesn't ever
let any discomfort she's feeling show.

1175
01:21:27,054 --> 01:21:29,389
And so, she never said to me...

1176
01:21:29,973 --> 01:21:31,725
"This is fantastically painful."

1177
01:21:32,392 --> 01:21:35,812
She just regarded it as a job to be done
and it had to be done.

1178
01:21:35,896 --> 01:21:39,608
And I think it was done
at immense personal cost and expense.

1179
01:21:41,652 --> 01:21:43,946
At that point, she was down to 75 pounds.

1180
01:21:44,530 --> 01:21:46,573
And I said, "If I do this play,

1181
01:21:46,657 --> 01:21:50,953
I'm going to put some flesh on her bones.
That's what we're going to achieve."

1182
01:21:51,537 --> 01:21:54,873
We're going to plump her up, uh,
by doing this play.

1183
01:21:54,957 --> 01:21:57,793
We're gonna make her happy
and by making her happy--

1184
01:21:57,876 --> 01:22:02,422
We're never gonna make her fat,
but we're not gonna keep her at 75 pounds.

1185
01:22:02,506 --> 01:22:04,508
We're gonna get-- And-- And we did.

1186
01:22:05,092 --> 01:22:09,263
In other words, I fed her and I would--

1187
01:22:09,346 --> 01:22:12,599
If I was working with her,
we'd have sandwiches and I'd say,

1188
01:22:12,683 --> 01:22:15,644
"I'm not going to eat my sandwich
until you eat yours.

1189
01:22:15,727 --> 01:22:17,729
You're going to eat that sandwich."
[laughs]

1190
01:22:18,313 --> 01:22:20,357
We just fed her,
and the stage manager

1191
01:22:20,440 --> 01:22:23,819
formalized it to a point
where she put a table up

1192
01:22:23,902 --> 01:22:27,406
in the wings of the theater,
and she put a red check tablecloth

1193
01:22:27,739 --> 01:22:32,786
and she put a sign saying "Cafe Didion"
in the wings of the theater.

1194
01:22:32,870 --> 01:22:36,999
And so, between shows
or before the show, she'd come in

1195
01:22:37,082 --> 01:22:40,127
and we'd give her croissants
and jam or soup.

1196
01:22:41,253 --> 01:22:44,464
By the time the run was over,
she was in pretty good shape.

1197
01:22:44,548 --> 01:22:46,633
We were very pleased and I said,

1198
01:22:46,717 --> 01:22:49,970
"I don't care whether this play
is a service to art,

1199
01:22:50,053 --> 01:22:54,683
it is a service to humanity, we--
We've got Joan blooming again."

1200
01:22:54,766 --> 01:22:58,187
And-- And I think the play gave her
a frame to her life

1201
01:22:58,270 --> 01:23:00,314
at a very, very, very difficult time.

1202
01:23:03,192 --> 01:23:05,402
[Joan] The larger thing
I came to understand...

1203
01:23:06,320 --> 01:23:09,031
was the value of that communal experience.

1204
01:23:10,407 --> 01:23:14,995
The audience is in the collaboration, too,
and we all are in it together

1205
01:23:15,078 --> 01:23:17,206
which is very like life itself, right?

1206
01:23:19,416 --> 01:23:20,834
[Redgrave] This happened...

1207
01:23:21,460 --> 01:23:25,797
on December 30th, 2003.

1208
01:23:27,508 --> 01:23:31,011
That may seem a while ago,
it won't when it happens to you,

1209
01:23:31,094 --> 01:23:33,096
and it will happen to you.

1210
01:23:33,805 --> 01:23:36,558
The details will be different,
but it will happen.

1211
01:23:36,642 --> 01:23:39,895
That's what I'm here to tell you.

1212
01:23:42,189 --> 01:23:45,484
It was lovely for me to see the pictures

1213
01:23:45,567 --> 01:23:47,819
of you and John getting ready.

1214
01:23:48,737 --> 01:23:51,323
Can you see all right,
or shall I tilt it up?

1215
01:23:51,406 --> 01:23:54,159
I don't think
you can see otherwise, can you?

1216
01:23:54,243 --> 01:23:55,410
I can see.

1217
01:23:55,911 --> 01:23:58,080
-Is that-- Is that me?
-[Redgrave] Yes, it is.

1218
01:23:58,163 --> 01:24:00,332
Well, she has dark glasses on anyway...

1219
01:24:00,624 --> 01:24:03,544
There you look very glamorous.
Not saying you don't--

1220
01:24:03,710 --> 01:24:08,215
Haven't often, if not always,
looked extremely glamorous,

1221
01:24:08,715 --> 01:24:10,884
but that one is particularly sort of...

1222
01:24:12,219 --> 01:24:13,887
"dark glasses" glamorous.

1223
01:24:14,805 --> 01:24:18,767
Oh, here she is.
The lovely-- The lovely girls.

1224
01:24:20,435 --> 01:24:21,395
[Redgrave groans]

1225
01:24:23,313 --> 01:24:27,192
In March 2009, Tash died.

1226
01:24:29,945 --> 01:24:32,072
I'd got a different understanding

1227
01:24:33,699 --> 01:24:37,244
how things change, but not only change

1228
01:24:37,870 --> 01:24:40,330
in a way that you certainly
hadn't expected...

1229
01:24:41,290 --> 01:24:42,666
but also change--

1230
01:24:43,333 --> 01:24:47,754
Change our perceptions, that's what
The Year of Magical Thinking was about.

1231
01:24:48,797 --> 01:24:49,756
[Joan] This one is John.

1232
01:24:50,174 --> 01:24:52,384
-[Redgrave] There's John, yeah.
-Next to Tasha.

1233
01:24:56,847 --> 01:24:58,807
I'm so glad you brought these.

1234
01:24:58,891 --> 01:25:00,809
Yeah, thank you, I'm glad, too.

1235
01:25:04,021 --> 01:25:04,855
It...

1236
01:25:05,522 --> 01:25:10,569
changed my perceptions in a specific,
amongst other, ways...

1237
01:25:12,988 --> 01:25:14,323
that I understood...

1238
01:25:16,325 --> 01:25:18,327
something I hadn't before.

1239
01:25:19,661 --> 01:25:20,579
Which was...

1240
01:25:21,914 --> 01:25:24,249
that you don't get all gloomy-doomy.

1241
01:25:24,333 --> 01:25:25,417
Yes.

1242
01:25:25,667 --> 01:25:26,502
Yes.

1243
01:25:41,892 --> 01:25:44,978
This book is called Blue Nights,
at the time I began it,

1244
01:25:45,062 --> 01:25:48,315
I found my mind turning
increasingly to illness.

1245
01:25:49,149 --> 01:25:51,818
To the end of promise,
the dwindling of the days,

1246
01:25:51,902 --> 01:25:55,322
the inevitability of the fading,
the dying of the brightness.

1247
01:25:56,698 --> 01:26:00,118
Blue Nights are the opposite
of the dying of the brightness,

1248
01:26:00,202 --> 01:26:02,120
but they are also its warning.

1249
01:26:05,290 --> 01:26:06,917
[Dunne] Writing Blue Nights was

1250
01:26:07,000 --> 01:26:10,003
quite a different experience
for you, creatively.

1251
01:26:10,462 --> 01:26:11,713
It was hard, actually.

1252
01:26:14,216 --> 01:26:15,092
Um...

1253
01:26:15,717 --> 01:26:19,137
In the middle of it I thought,
"I don't have to finish this,"

1254
01:26:19,596 --> 01:26:22,140
and I almost abandoned it then.

1255
01:26:24,101 --> 01:26:24,935
But...

1256
01:26:25,435 --> 01:26:26,270
I went on.

1257
01:26:27,729 --> 01:26:29,857
[Dunne] Is that because
it was about Quintana?

1258
01:26:30,232 --> 01:26:31,859
[Joan] Because it was about Quintana.

1259
01:26:35,195 --> 01:26:37,030
When she wrote Blue Nights then--

1260
01:26:44,621 --> 01:26:46,456
When she wrote Blue Nights then--

1261
01:26:48,333 --> 01:26:50,294
When I-- When I read it, I...

1262
01:26:52,171 --> 01:26:53,964
sent her a message, you know.

1263
01:26:56,508 --> 01:26:58,927
And she just said,
"I only wrote it for you."

1264
01:27:00,345 --> 01:27:04,016
She said, "I had no reason
to write it except to write it for you."

1265
01:27:04,433 --> 01:27:07,519
And, uh, I was very, very upset by this.

1266
01:27:08,896 --> 01:27:12,941
Um, she said, "I knew you'd be the only
person who'd understand this book."

1267
01:27:13,984 --> 01:27:15,986
I said, "I won't be the only person.

1268
01:27:16,069 --> 01:27:20,449
Lots of people will understand it."
But I was incredibly moved that she--

1269
01:27:21,450 --> 01:27:22,659
Blue Nights was her...

1270
01:27:23,744 --> 01:27:26,997
way of completing the process
we had been through, you know?

1271
01:27:28,457 --> 01:27:31,543
I think she wanted to think about
bringing up Quintana

1272
01:27:31,627 --> 01:27:33,128
and what had happened and--

1273
01:27:33,795 --> 01:27:37,591
And, I-- You know, with Joan,
I think she always writes to find out

1274
01:27:37,674 --> 01:27:40,552
what she thinks and what she feels,
and so I think...

1275
01:27:41,094 --> 01:27:44,640
that's what Blue Nights was partly about.

1276
01:27:45,599 --> 01:27:46,433
And--

1277
01:27:47,309 --> 01:27:49,436
And maybe it's kind of a release, too.

1278
01:27:49,895 --> 01:27:52,439
The idea that you get it down
and then...

1279
01:27:53,774 --> 01:27:58,153
it's-- I don't think--
Not that she wants to forget it,

1280
01:27:58,237 --> 01:28:00,614
but it just clarifies it in some way.

1281
01:28:06,203 --> 01:28:08,121
[Joan] I couldn't, in any way...

1282
01:28:09,873 --> 01:28:11,708
confront the death of my daughter

1283
01:28:12,167 --> 01:28:13,085
for a long time.

1284
01:28:14,795 --> 01:28:18,882
She was much more troubled
than I ever recognized

1285
01:28:18,966 --> 01:28:20,759
or admitted because she was--

1286
01:28:21,718 --> 01:28:27,015
At the same time that she was troubled,
she was infinitely amusing and charming.

1287
01:28:28,058 --> 01:28:30,936
And that's naturally
what I tended to focus on.

1288
01:28:35,566 --> 01:28:40,571
Most of us go through life
trying to focus on what works for us,

1289
01:28:40,779 --> 01:28:44,783
and her amusing side
definitely worked for me.

1290
01:28:53,041 --> 01:28:57,087
When I was little, the Donner party
was taught to children in California.

1291
01:28:59,047 --> 01:29:01,383
The interesting part
of the story is the...

1292
01:29:02,176 --> 01:29:04,469
failure to plan for misfortune.

1293
01:29:05,137 --> 01:29:08,640
To plan to protect one another,
to protect themselves.

1294
01:29:19,359 --> 01:29:20,402
She was adopted.

1295
01:29:21,820 --> 01:29:25,199
She had been given to me to take care of
and I had failed to,

1296
01:29:25,282 --> 01:29:27,659
so there was a huge guilt.

1297
01:29:33,373 --> 01:29:36,710
One of the things that worries us
about dying is we're afraid

1298
01:29:36,793 --> 01:29:39,630
we're leaving people behind
and they won't be able

1299
01:29:39,713 --> 01:29:42,549
to take care of themselves,
we have to take care of them.

1300
01:29:45,302 --> 01:29:46,136
But, in fact...

1301
01:29:48,222 --> 01:29:50,432
you see, I'm not leaving anybody behind.

1302
01:29:55,562 --> 01:29:57,731
I know that I can no longer reach her.

1303
01:29:59,107 --> 01:30:03,070
I know that should I try to reach her,
she will fade from my touch.

1304
01:30:04,655 --> 01:30:05,531
Vanish.

1305
01:30:06,740 --> 01:30:08,075
Pass into nothingness.

1306
01:30:09,660 --> 01:30:11,537
Fade as the blue nights fade.

1307
01:30:11,828 --> 01:30:13,580
Go as the brightness goes.

1308
01:30:14,957 --> 01:30:16,458
Go back into the blue.

1309
01:30:18,836 --> 01:30:21,338
I, myself, placed her ashes in the wall.

1310
01:30:22,840 --> 01:30:25,050
I know what it is I am now experiencing.

1311
01:30:25,133 --> 01:30:27,970
I know what the frailty is,
I know what the fear is.

1312
01:30:28,470 --> 01:30:30,305
The fear is not for what is lost.

1313
01:30:30,889 --> 01:30:33,308
What is lost is already in the wall.

1314
01:30:34,560 --> 01:30:39,147
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost...

1315
01:30:40,274 --> 01:30:43,610
yet there is no day in her life
in which I do not see her.

1316
01:31:01,378 --> 01:31:04,131
[Obama] Hello, everybody,
and welcome to the White House.

1317
01:31:04,214 --> 01:31:07,384
Thank you for joining us, uh,
to celebrate Joan Didion...

1318
01:31:08,135 --> 01:31:11,847
who rightly has earned distinction as...

1319
01:31:12,514 --> 01:31:14,892
one of the most celebrated
American writers of her generation.

1320
01:31:15,767 --> 01:31:17,728
I'm surprised she hadn't already
gotten this award.

1321
01:31:27,696 --> 01:31:30,282
[man] For her mastery
of style in writing...

1322
01:31:31,325 --> 01:31:33,327
exploring the culture around us

1323
01:31:33,619 --> 01:31:35,537
and exposing the depths of sorrow,

1324
01:31:36,079 --> 01:31:40,792
Ms. Didion has produced works
of startling honesty and fierce intellect.

1325
01:31:41,210 --> 01:31:43,420
Rendered personal stories universal,

1326
01:31:43,712 --> 01:31:46,798
and illuminated
the seemingly peripheral details

1327
01:31:46,882 --> 01:31:48,550
that are central to our lives.

1328
01:31:49,176 --> 01:31:51,011
[crowd applauding]

1329
01:32:16,036 --> 01:32:18,747
[Joan] "See enough and write it down,"
I tell myself.

1330
01:32:20,958 --> 01:32:24,336
And then some morning,
when the world seems drained of wonder,

1331
01:32:24,419 --> 01:32:26,880
some day when I'm going
through the motions

1332
01:32:26,964 --> 01:32:29,800
of doing what I am supposed to do,
which is write...

1333
01:32:35,180 --> 01:32:38,684
On that bankrupt morning,
I will simply open my notebook

1334
01:32:38,767 --> 01:32:42,771
and there it will all be, a forgotten
account with accumulated interest.

1335
01:32:44,398 --> 01:32:46,817
Paid passage back to the world out there.

1336
01:32:58,412 --> 01:32:59,663
It all comes back.

1337
01:33:07,004 --> 01:33:08,797
Remember what it is to be me.

1338
01:33:10,465 --> 01:33:12,009
That is always the point.