Speaker 1: Okay, we're life. Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to
Speaker 1: William Ramsey investigates on today's show of a very special guest.
Speaker 1: His name is Michael Kaplan's last name is spelled cap
Speaker 1: la n and he's just finished an excellent documentary which
Speaker 1: I watched yesterday. The title of the documentary is All
Speaker 1: in the Movie and it will be out in two
Speaker 1: days October first, twenty twenty one. People go check that out.
Speaker 1: But mister Kaplan is an independent film director, producer, and teacher.
Speaker 1: The film before this was titled A Magical Vision, which
Speaker 1: is a feature length documentary that spotlights Eugene Berger, a
Speaker 1: magician and greu of the magical arts, and it has
Speaker 1: been shown in festivals from Chicago to Indian won an
Speaker 1: audience award at the Spirit Enlightened Film Festival. He's also
Speaker 1: directed Stones from the Soil, documentary about his father that
Speaker 1: showed on National PBS in two thousand and five. He's
Speaker 1: an associate professor in the Cinema, Art and Science Department
Speaker 1: at Columbia College in Chicago. And this movie, the background
Speaker 1: really is Chicago. It's almost part of the story. Is
Speaker 1: this interesting part of the city that Algren wrote about
Speaker 1: and lived in. But director Michael Kaplan can talk more
Speaker 1: about that. So, Michael Kaplan, are you there.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: William Good. Great to have you. Delighted that you agreed
Speaker 1: to the interview. Really an interesting topic. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your background? And yeah, you became
Speaker 1: interested in the subject of Algren and what led you
Speaker 1: to start the production on this documentary.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been making films and videos for probably about
Speaker 2: twenty five years now, and over the last twenty years
Speaker 2: I really focused on documentaries. And you mentioned two of
Speaker 2: my previous documentaries, and I was really in the midst
Speaker 2: of finishing up my previous documentary about Eugene Berger, the Magician,
Speaker 2: when I met the photographer Archhay at a gallery opening
Speaker 2: in Chicago, and Art at that time was a young,
Speaker 2: spry eighty seven years old, and Art was a real trip.
Speaker 2: He was a real character, originally from Brooklyn and a
Speaker 2: little short fire plug of a guy who had traveled
Speaker 2: all over the world taking pictures of everybody from presidents
Speaker 2: to movie stars. But what I knew him as was
Speaker 2: the photographer of Nelson Algren. Growing up in Chicago, Nelson
Speaker 2: Algren was just someone that you knew about who wrote
Speaker 2: about the people at the bottom of the social spectrum.
Speaker 2: And if you had seen a photograph of Algren, you
Speaker 2: had seen Archase work because he was pretty much the
Speaker 2: dominant photographer of Algren. And so when I met him,
Speaker 2: I just said, well, mister Shay, I've always loved your
Speaker 2: work about Nelson Algren. And he said, what do you do?
Speaker 2: I told him, and he said, well, you should. You
Speaker 2: should do a documentary about Nelson Algren. And I was
Speaker 2: kind of shocked that no one had at that point.
Speaker 2: And something I always tell my students is be careful
Speaker 2: what you say yes to because I said yes, and
Speaker 2: then you know, many years later, we finally ended up
Speaker 2: with this documentary about Nelson Algren.
Speaker 1: And for people who may not know, can you just
Speaker 1: give a brief background of Nelson Algren and kind of
Speaker 1: what led him to writing and kind of what he
Speaker 1: wrote about.
Speaker 2: Well. Nelson Algren was born in Detroit but grew up
Speaker 2: in Chicago. His family moved when he was at a
Speaker 2: pretty young age, and he grew up something also I
Speaker 2: did not know on the about two blocks away from
Speaker 2: where I live on the northwest side of Chicago, and
Speaker 2: his father was working class, he was a car mechanic,
Speaker 2: and all Grinn grew up thinking that he would be
Speaker 2: a journalist. That's what he wanted to do. So he
Speaker 2: went to the University of Illinois in Chicago and he
Speaker 2: was in the midst of getting his degree to be
Speaker 2: a journalist when the depression hit, and that really, for
Speaker 2: him and for a lot of people, just changed everything
Speaker 2: about his life. He ended up going on the road,
Speaker 2: taking you know, kind of bumming around the country, ended
Speaker 2: up in Texas, ended up getting arrested for stealing a
Speaker 2: typewriter while he was in Texas. And when he came
Speaker 2: back to Chicago, he had already started writing. And simultaneously
Speaker 2: the WPA had been formed, and one of the programs
Speaker 2: they had was it basically supported writers and other artists
Speaker 2: to communicate what was going on around the country to
Speaker 2: the rest of the country. There's actually a really great
Speaker 2: book that just came out about that program because it
Speaker 2: really changed the lives of so many people, people like
Speaker 2: Richard Wright and Studs Turkle and Algren was one of
Speaker 2: those people, and so was at that point in the
Speaker 2: late thirties early forties that he started writing about the
Speaker 2: people who society had left behind the people who were
Speaker 2: the addicts, the drunks, the sex workers, the people that
Speaker 2: you know, didn't really get a second look from society.
Speaker 2: So that was really what put him into that path
Speaker 2: of writing about that part of society.
Speaker 1: Right, So he kind of saw the other side that
Speaker 1: maybe not as many people thought were as glamorous, but
Speaker 1: he seemed to really mix with those people as well.
Speaker 2: Would you agree with that, Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He lived in the neighborhood wicker Park, which is now
Speaker 2: a totally kind of gentrified, very nice area, but at
Speaker 2: the time it was kind of a slum and he
Speaker 2: lived there in a little one room apartment. He had
Speaker 2: to go to the y m c A To take
Speaker 2: a shower, you know. I mean he was living really
Speaker 2: small and the people he wrote about were the people
Speaker 2: on his street. So he was really he had a
Speaker 2: commitment to that telling those stories and telling him from
Speaker 2: close up, not just from afar.
Speaker 1: And he was kind of that sensibility he got. He
Speaker 1: got pinched for stealing a typewriter in Texas. He was
Speaker 1: interested in selling stuff on the black market while he
Speaker 1: was in the ward World War two, so he kind
Speaker 1: of seemed a little scrapy, like he was one of
Speaker 1: those people, you know, just trying to get by the
Speaker 1: people that he wrote about. Really, can you talk about
Speaker 1: how he kind of made it in the literary world,
Speaker 1: what his book was, and how he kind of made
Speaker 1: his mark.
Speaker 2: Well, he had written several books. He had written a
Speaker 2: novel somewhere, Someone in Boots, which he later just kind
Speaker 2: of left off his list. He he kind of disavowed it.
Speaker 2: But then he went on to really the first novel
Speaker 2: a note was called Never Come Morning, and it was
Speaker 2: in the early forties, and it was really set during
Speaker 2: in that that world that I've been talking about, the
Speaker 2: world around him and of the people who were the dispossessed.
Speaker 2: After that, he wrote a collection of short stories called
Speaker 2: The Neon Wilderness, which just its name, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of tells you so much about what the big cities
Speaker 2: were becoming in the US after World War Two. This
Speaker 2: this place, you know of of kind of glamour, but
Speaker 2: you know, also a place where there were lots of
Speaker 2: people who were not getting the benefit of what was
Speaker 2: starting to happen in the US. And it was really sorry,
Speaker 2: go ahead, no.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say. He was very sensitive to
Speaker 1: kind of the class situation where there was definitely an
Speaker 1: under dispossessed. Yeah, people who were definitely he says, I
Speaker 1: think the back of the of the billboard, the people
Speaker 1: who lived behind the bill.
Speaker 2: Right, correct. Correct. And it was after that that he
Speaker 2: wrote what most people consider is Magnus Opus, which was
Speaker 2: a Man with a Golden Arm, which later got made
Speaker 2: into a movie with Frank Sinatra and a Man with
Speaker 2: a Golden Arm was, you know, a sprawling, five six
Speaker 2: hundred page novel that really dug into this one character,
Speaker 2: Frankie Machine, who had come out of World War Two
Speaker 2: and was a morphine addict. He was also a drummer,
Speaker 2: a jazz drummer, and he was also a dealer of cards.
Speaker 2: He was a poker dealer, and so the idea of
Speaker 2: the Man with the Golden Arm had a kind of
Speaker 2: a two sided meaning because it was about someone who
Speaker 2: was an addict but also someone who who played poker,
Speaker 2: and that really catapulted him into the mainstream. The book
Speaker 2: won the first National Book Award, which was in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty Eleanor Roosevelt awarded it to him, and he was
Speaker 2: he was, all of a sudden he had something close
Speaker 2: to a bestseller and that really made him for a while,
Speaker 2: not for as long as you might think, made him
Speaker 2: kind of a household name, someone that people knew and
Speaker 2: would read and book clubs and was someone that was discussed,
Speaker 2: you know, in the press.
Speaker 1: And he was also kind of suppressed. Some people thought
Speaker 1: he was a little bit too over the edge, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think there was something the Polish Roman Catholic
Speaker 1: Legion complained about his writing things like that, and he
Speaker 1: wrote about Polish people, which I think is interesting too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a lot of the neighborhood that he
Speaker 2: lived in was Polish immigrants and the yes, the Roman
Speaker 2: Catholic Church, the Polish Catholic I forgot community. They wrote
Speaker 2: up against him. There were a lot of pushback later
Speaker 2: on when he wrote Chicago's City on the Make, which
Speaker 2: was kind of this love and hate letter to Chicago,
Speaker 2: he got lots of pushback from the tourist industry. People
Speaker 2: felt like he made Chicago look like not a really
Speaker 2: nice place, and so he he definitely was always kind
Speaker 2: of fighting, you know, the power. And then later on
Speaker 2: and it's not in the movie, but he the FBI
Speaker 2: actually kept a file on him and made it difficult
Speaker 2: for him to travel for a while because he could
Speaker 2: not get a passport, so he was he ran into
Speaker 2: a lot of roadblocks.
Speaker 1: Right, and so he had this kind of underground thing.
Speaker 1: But he also because he came from there, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's a couple of people who were marked in
Speaker 1: your film that his ear for their cadence, of their talk,
Speaker 1: in the way that the locals in Chicago talked like
Speaker 1: he had it down like that was part of his
Speaker 1: realism or his authenticity, right.
Speaker 2: Right, it was. It was very much you know, you know,
Speaker 2: he wrote from the conversations that he had with the
Speaker 2: people in the bars on the street. You know, these
Speaker 2: were first hand accounts. In many ways, it was kind
Speaker 2: of a predecessor to you know, the modern journalism, that
Speaker 2: kind of the new journalism that came out in the
Speaker 2: sixties with Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe. Where he was
Speaker 2: he was in the story. He wasn't a character in
Speaker 2: the story, but he was in the story in that
Speaker 2: this was something that he wrote from hundreds of hours
Speaker 2: of being in this community and talking to people and
Speaker 2: getting the stories. So when he wrote about the people,
Speaker 2: he was not a tourist, as we say, coming in
Speaker 2: and just kind of spending a couple of weeks and
Speaker 2: you know, getting all this research and then going home.
Speaker 2: You know he did, you know he this was his life,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty four hours a day, three sixty five
Speaker 2: days a week, right.
Speaker 1: And he lived that. I think some one of the
Speaker 1: persons in your film quoted he wasn't a voyeur. He
Speaker 1: was among his people, horse betting, gambling, drinking, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of living kind of a beat, beat writer's type
Speaker 1: of life in Chicago. And it is interesting in the
Speaker 1: film you have all these people from Chicago commenting on
Speaker 1: Algren and what a cultural influence he was. So you
Speaker 1: have Billy Corgan, William Freakin, the director of Invasion of
Speaker 1: the Body Statues, I can't remember his name right now,
Speaker 1: but like really interesting characters who talked about him from
Speaker 1: their perspective.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, no, he
Speaker 2: you know, he definitely was part of that you know community.
Speaker 2: Rich I'm not Richard Kaufman, Philip Kaufman as the director
Speaker 2: you're thinking of. Yeah, I mean I ran into people
Speaker 2: who knew him when they were young, like Freaking and
Speaker 2: Kaufman actually, you know, knew him and spent time with
Speaker 2: him and did things with him when they were young
Speaker 2: growing up in Chicago in the sixties. But you know,
Speaker 2: the people who knew him knew about his commitment. And yes,
Speaker 2: he also liked to have a good time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He wasn't like the kind of prototypical beat writer in
Speaker 2: that he didn't feel like he had to become a
Speaker 2: drug user, you know, in order to write about addicts.
Speaker 2: But he's certainly you know, he lived that life of
Speaker 2: playing poker and hanging in the bars, and you know,
Speaker 2: he liked the box and he liked to go see
Speaker 2: boxing matches. He he would go to the horse, you know,
Speaker 2: the to the racing track. He you know, he definitely
Speaker 2: he knew how to have a good time, that was
Speaker 2: for sure. But it wasn't about you know, just getting wasted,
Speaker 2: you know, like you know Hunter Thompson, where he would
Speaker 2: feel like he'd have to take twenty drugs before he
Speaker 2: could write about anything. You know, Algren was he was
Speaker 2: he was a mix of a journalist and a fiction
Speaker 2: because he would take the journalistic research and then write
Speaker 2: fiction about it.
Speaker 1: Right, And you do mention like Hunter s Thompson quoted
Speaker 1: from A Walk on the wild Side, really complimented Algren.
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really interesting segment you had.
Speaker 1: But also he uh kind of mixed with some high
Speaker 1: end literary figures. Can you talk about his relationship ship
Speaker 1: to Simone de Beauvoirs so I mean really notable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he could, he could. He could also mingle
Speaker 2: with the you know, the the glitterati. He could, you know,
Speaker 2: go to Lake Shore Drive and hang out with the
Speaker 2: you know, the rich people who loved to hear, you know,
Speaker 2: this esteemed man who had won these awards. And it
Speaker 2: was through knowing some of those people that Simone de
Speaker 2: beauvois was told by a friend of hers to call
Speaker 2: up Nelson Algren when she came to Chicago, and they
Speaker 2: you know, she did, and they immediately became lovers and
Speaker 2: had this extended, five six year long love affair which
Speaker 2: really lasted for the rest of Algren's life. But the
Speaker 2: most intimate part, the most intense part, was those five
Speaker 2: six years. And yes, he when he got to go
Speaker 2: to Paris, he hung out with all of the you know,
Speaker 2: literati in the Left Bank, and he could do that,
Speaker 2: you know, but that was not where he wanted to be.
Speaker 2: He wanted to go and hang out and have a
Speaker 2: few drinks and then he wanted to go back to
Speaker 2: where he was living, you know, and it's just kind
Speaker 2: of you know, little little flat with you know, his
Speaker 2: books stacked up and newspapers and stuff on the walls,
Speaker 2: and you know, just really it was not what he
Speaker 2: was yearning for. You know, he was not going back
Speaker 2: to the suburbs or going you know, back to Hyde
Speaker 2: Park and just you know, living the middle class lifestyle.
Speaker 2: He lived the life that he wrote about.
Speaker 1: Right, So he didn't seem to be really attracted to
Speaker 1: that kind of cultural elite of Bouvois and Sartra and
Speaker 1: all these other characters. But it was interesting that he
Speaker 1: thought that. I think he stayed in the book. She
Speaker 1: was his intellectual equal. So somebody externally you would see
Speaker 1: walking down the street didn't look like maybe a college professor,
Speaker 1: but obviously super intelligent guy and really kind of a character,
Speaker 1: and he kind of did. He was really a dedicated writer.
Speaker 1: I mean, my impression was he was a very dedicated
Speaker 1: writer who didn't maintain his relate. He had been in
Speaker 1: and out of relationships frequently and kind of bounced around.
Speaker 1: Did you think that his writing career prevented him from
Speaker 1: having long term relationships?
Speaker 2: Well, He's got a really famous quote, which is, if
Speaker 2: you want to be a successful writer, be a bachelor.
Speaker 2: You know, he really felt like he didn't want something
Speaker 2: that would weigh him down. So he got married, then
Speaker 2: got divorced, then married the same woman again later on
Speaker 2: in divorce, then married someone else in divorced. He was
Speaker 2: never married for more than about two years. You know. Ironically,
Speaker 2: it was really de Bouvois, which was to him his
Speaker 2: one true love, and he would have married her. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it would have worked. I don't think
Speaker 2: it would have, but uh, you know, he uh, he
Speaker 2: was not someone who wanted to get weighed down except
Speaker 2: for Debouvois, and that was you know, one of the
Speaker 2: great kind of sadnesses for him is that they could
Speaker 2: never reconcile their different lifestyles, and.
Speaker 1: She was kind of like a lot. It seemed like
Speaker 1: it was a love triangle too. There other things involved
Speaker 1: pulling her away, but that was his only disappointment. He
Speaker 1: had kind of had some success in Hollywood, at least
Speaker 1: with his writing, But can you explain what his impressions
Speaker 1: were with how his works were made into films.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's an old story, you know that the
Speaker 2: writers almost never liked the books that get made from
Speaker 2: their work. And he he he was a stubborn guy,
Speaker 2: you know. So when he went out to work with
Speaker 2: Otto Preminger on Man with the Goal and Arm, he
Speaker 2: he they you know, they came to blows very quickly
Speaker 2: and he left after about a week and a half,
Speaker 2: you know, because they could just not work together. And
Speaker 2: he he got it paid, you know what by today
Speaker 2: the equivalent was, you know, not a terrible amount of money,
Speaker 2: but given you know what could have happened if he
Speaker 2: had really had a good negotiator, a good agent. He
Speaker 2: kind of got screwed. And that happened also with his uh,
Speaker 2: the second book that got made into a film, Walk
Speaker 2: on the wild Side. So he you know, he he
Speaker 2: wanted to be known. He liked being known as a writer,
Speaker 2: but also there was a part of him that resisted it.
Speaker 2: He didn't want the you know, the glamour because he
Speaker 2: was really worried that he would lose his connection to
Speaker 2: the subject matter that he wanted to write about. You know.
Speaker 2: You know, Russell Banks has this great quote that you know,
Speaker 2: the amazing novelist Russell Banks knew Algrin when he was
Speaker 2: very young and Russell Banks said, you know, we we
Speaker 2: we all worshiped that that bitch goddess fame, you know,
Speaker 2: but then we also kind of push her away. And
Speaker 2: all was really kind of the embodiment of that, you
Speaker 2: know that he just he didn't want to you know,
Speaker 2: just have NonStop parties and uh, you know, literary events.
Speaker 2: He wanted to be able to return back to the
Speaker 2: source right.
Speaker 1: And also interesting aspect of his characters, he didn't seem
Speaker 1: to take himself too seriously, like maybe an author thinks
Speaker 1: of himself as very profound, but he seems to really
Speaker 1: have kind of a funny aspect to him and everybody,
Speaker 1: like people mentioned in the movie, this is like one
Speaker 1: of the funniest people they've ever met.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he he definitely could. He he was not afraid
Speaker 2: to be a clown. You know, he would he would
Speaker 2: be any any any nice clothes that he got he
Speaker 2: had gotten from goodwill, you know, I mean, he was
Speaker 2: he was a guy. You know, he would wear a
Speaker 2: rope for a belt, you know, to a really nice
Speaker 2: kind of she Shi event, just because it was kind
Speaker 2: of his way of you know, stickin his thumb in
Speaker 2: the eyes of you know, the people who were a
Speaker 2: little bit more elite, so, uh, you know, he he
Speaker 2: did not want to, you know, embrace that life, and
Speaker 2: uh he kind of, you know, stayed away from it.
Speaker 2: And now I've forgotten the question that you asked.
Speaker 1: I was just saying that it was just an like
Speaker 1: for somebody who was a serious saw to himself as
Speaker 1: a writer. Oh what One aspect of his character was
Speaker 1: that he was kind of like he was. I think
Speaker 1: you said he went to improvs and joked around.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he would, he would hang out with He'd go
Speaker 2: to Second City and hang out there. He he was
Speaker 2: a kind of a goof and his writing could be
Speaker 2: comic too. It was really serious, but something like Walk
Speaker 2: on the wild Side is kind of a you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's kind of a goofy protagonist who doesn't you know,
Speaker 2: really get what it is that he doesn't get, you know,
Speaker 2: is kind of oblivious. He thinks that he's someone who's
Speaker 2: really kind of on top of every thing, but doesn't
Speaker 2: understand that he really has no clue what's going on.
Speaker 2: So he could write comedy. Something he wrote a lot
Speaker 2: more into the sixties were more kind of comic little
Speaker 2: pieces and as just a person to hang out with
Speaker 2: He could definitely just be very very funny. So it
Speaker 2: was not about just you know, I'm doing this, this
Speaker 2: is serious and you know, don't interrupt my serious work.
Speaker 2: He recognized that you had to be able to laugh
Speaker 2: sometimes even at yourself.
Speaker 1: And he kind of some of his I mean you
Speaker 1: say in the film that some of his films, i
Speaker 1: mean books became sold as pull fiction. Where do you
Speaker 1: think Algrin's work deserves to be sitting in kind of
Speaker 1: current literary perspective?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's got to be kind. I mean, the
Speaker 2: reason we made this and spend so much time on
Speaker 2: it is because it should be part of you know,
Speaker 2: just the American you know, the standard of American literature.
Speaker 2: It should be you know, taught in any kind of
Speaker 2: a survey course of American literature. His work really embodied
Speaker 2: what America was like in the mid twentieth century and his, uh,
Speaker 2: his work is admired and respected by so many people,
Speaker 2: other writers, other artists who understood that not just what
Speaker 2: he wrote about the but the way he wrote about it.
Speaker 2: He had a style that was unique, that was something
Speaker 2: that he worked hard on. And he was he was
Speaker 2: a craftsman, you know, he he cared about the way
Speaker 2: in which he wrote, and so you know, people like
Speaker 2: Hemingway said he was second only to Faulkner, William Faulkner
Speaker 2: as an American writer, and so he should just be
Speaker 2: part of the cannon of American writing.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that he didn't have that
Speaker 1: many writers do is this skill of self promotion, whether
Speaker 1: they wear fancy clothes or they are going on circuits
Speaker 1: or hobnobbing with people. He didn't seem to. He seemed
Speaker 1: to be the opposite. Can you talk about how how
Speaker 1: that sensibility affected his appreciation of his work.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a problem. You know, he wasn't in
Speaker 2: the Internet age. But the reality is, you know, it's
Speaker 2: always been about promotion, you know, I mean, from f
Speaker 2: Scott Smitzgerald, you know, to Hemingway. These were people that
Speaker 2: got known because of kind of their persona. And even
Speaker 2: you know, amongst Algren's contemporaries, people like Norman Mahler and
Speaker 2: Saul Bellow had a way of kind of presenting themselves
Speaker 2: in a way that felt comfortable to the people who
Speaker 2: you know, wanted to celebrate them. And he he just thought,
Speaker 2: you know that that was not part of his job.
Speaker 2: He felt like his job was to write. He didn't
Speaker 2: feel like his job was to promote himself. He would
Speaker 2: go he'd go on TV, he'd go on a radio
Speaker 2: show and talk about his work if he was invited,
Speaker 2: but he was not out there kind of hobnobbing in
Speaker 2: order to maximize his visibility. He didn't felt that the
Speaker 2: work should cut should, you know, speak for itself, and
Speaker 2: that that's that's a problem. That's a problem today. You know,
Speaker 2: we see that in you know, the Internet age, that
Speaker 2: if you're not out there, you know, doing the social
Speaker 2: media thing, then uh, it can hurt you because people
Speaker 2: may not find you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean I can speak to that from experience.
Speaker 1: It's so important. And now some of these other writers
Speaker 1: doing that, their almost skill was in self promotion than
Speaker 1: actually writing. You know, but you see how persona has
Speaker 1: helped all of these authors sell books. Hunter S. Thompson,
Speaker 1: Tough Guy, Hill's Angels, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, I mean yeah, he was certainly
Speaker 2: great at that. Thompson, you know, he put himself out there,
Speaker 2: is like the crazy guy who would do anything.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and so when you went about kind of compile,
Speaker 1: I mean, the pictures are fantastic. There's all kinds of
Speaker 1: pictures of him with studstorical, all these other characters from Chicago.
Speaker 1: What was it like kind of would did you get
Speaker 1: a lot of assistance from Shay or how did you
Speaker 1: find all of the footage in photography? Do you mind
Speaker 1: talking about that?
Speaker 2: No, not at all. So, like I said, what started
Speaker 2: this whole process was meeting Art Shay, and I knew
Speaker 2: that if I couldn't get access to his work, that
Speaker 2: there would be no way to make a good Nelson
Speaker 2: Algren movie. And a huge portion of the still black
Speaker 2: and white photos that we include in the movie, our
Speaker 2: archas work not just of Algrin, but of you know
Speaker 2: what life in the street and in the poorer areas
Speaker 2: of the city were like. We did find a huge
Speaker 2: amount of other photos and some video as well, mostly
Speaker 2: through the Algren archive, which we spent many, many days,
Speaker 2: long days going through, finding lots of letters back and
Speaker 2: forth between different people and Algrin writing to people and
Speaker 2: them writing back. You know, I wish if there's something
Speaker 2: I would, you know, have loved to have had different
Speaker 2: about the movie, it would have been more film footage,
Speaker 2: you know, That's the one thing we did not have
Speaker 2: could not find a lot of but we did find
Speaker 2: some nice footage of him, and that was really where
Speaker 2: most of it came from, was from our time at
Speaker 2: the Algren Archive.
Speaker 1: And just one last question, I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think Algren's perception of himself after he had written his
Speaker 1: eleven books many articles the Atlantic? How do you think that?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you? I mean I got a sense
Speaker 1: that he might have left Chicago moved east out of
Speaker 1: kind of a bitterness or emptiness for not being appreciated.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that.
Speaker 2: He became very bitter near the end of his life,
Speaker 2: and it's really unfortunate. He felt like he was no
Speaker 2: longer appreciated in Chicago, and he took this opportunity to
Speaker 2: go out east and write about the Hurricane Carter murder
Speaker 2: case and kind of settled ultimately in sag Harbor on
Speaker 2: Long Island, and kind of at that point was embraced
Speaker 2: late to the party, mind you, but he was embraced
Speaker 2: by the the literary elite out east. People like Kurt Vonnegut,
Speaker 2: Salmon Rushdie all became really supportive and uh fans of Algrin.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he really he really felt like ultimately he
Speaker 2: was no longer appreciated in his in his own city,
Speaker 2: that people had gone on to people like Saul Bellow
Speaker 2: who wrote about the middle class, you know, and that
Speaker 2: Algrin's perspective was not you know, was not welcome. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, he he kind of he kind of said, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, screw all this, I'm moving on.
Speaker 1: Right, and seg Harbor was kind of like a literary
Speaker 1: on Clive, Right.
Speaker 3: There were other writers, Yeah, yeah, yeah, there were there
Speaker 3: were a ton of people out there like Vonnegut, and
Speaker 3: he he had several years of just living you know,
Speaker 3: on the ocean and feeling like, yeah, the life, you know,
Speaker 3: life has worked out pretty well for me.
Speaker 2: You know. So it kind of you know, had somewhat
Speaker 2: of a happy ending, you know, in that he was
Speaker 2: appreciated near the end of his life, and just before
Speaker 2: the end of his life he had gotten what had
Speaker 2: always been denied to him, which was membership in the
Speaker 2: American Academy of Arts and Letters, and which was kind
Speaker 2: of the embodiment of you know, being accepted by the
Speaker 2: mainstream literary community. And then he you know, had a
Speaker 2: heart attack and died before he could even you know,
Speaker 2: go to the occasion to get to be celebrated and
Speaker 2: be fedted. So it was kind of this bittersweet ending
Speaker 2: to his life.
Speaker 1: Almost is like he he lived kind of a life
Speaker 1: like the characters he wrote about in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: like that was a reflection of him in the way
Speaker 1: his life kind of worked out where. I mean, this
Speaker 1: movie comes out in two days. Where's the best place
Speaker 1: for people to watch it? All?
Speaker 2: We are getting a small theatrical run. It's going to
Speaker 2: be opening in Los Angeles on October first, playing at
Speaker 2: multiple Lemley Theaters and if you're not in LA, so first,
Speaker 2: if you are in LA, please come out support independent
Speaker 2: documentary work. It would be great. I'm going to be
Speaker 2: out there on Saturday night, October second to introduce it
Speaker 2: and do a Q and A. But if you're not
Speaker 2: in LA or can't get to the movies in the theater,
Speaker 2: it's going to be available streaming through several of several
Speaker 2: Chicago based theaters like the Gene Siskel Film Theater and
Speaker 2: the Music Box Theater, and they'll have it available streaming
Speaker 2: kind of in the what we call the virtual theatrical mode.
Speaker 2: And then next year, you know, the goal is to
Speaker 2: get it out onto one of the streamers like a
Speaker 2: Netflix or a Hulu, you know, depending on how things go.
Speaker 2: But right now, you know, so starting October fifteenth, it'll
Speaker 2: be available through those two theaters, the Gene Cisco Theater
Speaker 2: and the Music Box Theater.
Speaker 1: Great. So then supporting independent means is so important too,
Speaker 1: you know, you encourage and encourages the furtherance of the
Speaker 1: creation of films like this. So, oh my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the website that I'm showing on YouTube for
Speaker 1: people are watching YouTube is all grin Themovie, all one
Speaker 1: word dot com, allgrenthmovie dot com. And is that website
Speaker 1: the best place to contact you if people want to
Speaker 1: reach out to you, Michael.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely. And then you can also see we've got
Speaker 2: the usual you know social media, Facebook and Instagram and
Speaker 2: Twitter and those are all available you know, through algrenthemovie
Speaker 2: dot com. And that would be the best way to
Speaker 2: contact us. You know, you can send us an email
Speaker 2: and we we love to hear about it because you know,
Speaker 2: we are kind of dedicated to spreading the word of
Speaker 2: Nelson Algren.
Speaker 1: Great. Is there anything you'd like to add before we
Speaker 1: wrap it up or before I wrap it up?
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things that is so
Speaker 2: striking to me about you know, the life we live
Speaker 2: today in the in the United States is the names
Speaker 2: and the places and maybe the ethnic groups have changed,
Speaker 2: but the reality is the world that Algren wrote about
Speaker 2: back in the forties and fifties is still here in America.
Speaker 2: And you know, we're we're hoping that this wakes people up,
Speaker 2: who the people who may want to address those stories,
Speaker 2: because there are still those stories to tell, and those
Speaker 2: are really important to tell those stories about the people
Speaker 2: who are not who are living on the wrong side
Speaker 2: of the billboard, as Algren said, you know, who don't
Speaker 2: have a Chevy in their garage, you know, and two
Speaker 2: kids in a white pick of fence. Lots of people
Speaker 2: who are still waiting for the American dream to happen.
Speaker 2: And that's something that we hope Algren inspires people to do,
Speaker 2: is to investigate and take a look at the America
Speaker 2: that is still not a place for you know, that
Speaker 2: has not gotten everybody on board.
Speaker 1: Right, That's so true. Again, the title of the documentary
Speaker 1: is Algrin the movie and the guest today is the
Speaker 1: director Michael Kaplan c ap l A N. And again,
Speaker 1: the website is algrindemovie dot com so you can go
Speaker 1: check it out there, and its release is October second
Speaker 1: or October one in LA. Then out of two spots,
Speaker 1: I'll try to put these in the show notes to
Speaker 1: two spots in the Chicago Cisco Theater. And then good
Speaker 1: luck with just further distribution of your film. Thanks for
Speaker 1: so much for your time.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Well, all right, take care, okay,