From the Archives: Novelist Cathleen Schine on the Passion of Love Letters.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MAY 21, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 052101np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Filmmaker John Waters
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with FRESH AIR.

On today's archive edition of FRESH AIR, film director John Waters talks about his latest comedy, "Pecker," about a mischievous young photographer from blue-collar Baltimore who becomes the darling of the New York art world. It's just come out on video.

The new film, "The Love Letter," opened today, the story of a romance between an older woman and a younger man that begins with a mysterious love letter meant for someone else. We'll hear from Cathleen Schine, who wrote the novel the film was adapted from.

Also, David Bianculli reviews the final episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street," which airs tonight, and we'll hear an excerpt of our interview with the series co-creator, Tom Fontana (ph).

That's all coming up on FRESH AIR. First the news.

(NEWS BREAK)

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

It's usually with great affection that people refer to film director John Waters as "the king of bad taste." He earned his crown with his early work, such as "Pink Flamingos," in which the main characters vied for the title "The Filthiest Person Alive."

Waters's latest movies have more to do with making audiences laugh than offending them. Waters's comedies, like "Polyester," "Hairspray" and "Serial Mom" are, as he puts it, "about people who are nuts, but think they're the sane ones." His affection for these characters always comes through.

His latest movie, "Pecker," has just come out on video and DVD. It's set in Baltimore, Waters's home town. It stars Edward Furlong as a young man who takes pictures of everything around him. He creates an exhibit of his picture son the walls of the greasy spoon where he works. A New York gallery owner sees it, loves it, and suddenly Pecker's world collides with the New York art world and his life is turned upside-down.

I spoke with John Waters last fall, when the film was released, and asked him to describe the character of Pecker.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JOHN WATERS, DIRECTOR, "PECKER": Pecker is certainly an innocent, for a John Waters character, but he's not stupid. And he's a local photographer in kind of a blue-collar neighborhood in Baltimore that is obsessed by taking pictures of every single thing around him, from the cheeseburger that's sizzling on the grill where he's a short-order cook to his very strange grandmother, who believes that the statue of the Virgin Mary in her bedroom talks to her nightly.

All the things Pecker takes a picture with -- and he got his name from picking at his food as a child -- was that he thinks are completely normal. He's used to them, and he is merely recording, for his own obsession, the world around him. So that is what Pecker is like, and he's still a good guy.

And when the New York art world notices him, for all the right reasons, they like his pictures for the right reasons. They're not looking down on him. But they are taking his images out of context, and that is where the dreaded irony enters the picture and changes Pecker's life and his world around him.

GROSS: And what is so dreaded about irony?

WATERS: Nothing. I make my living from irony. Irony is paying for the cup of coffee that is sitting right here I'm drinking. That is what I sell. But I am the first to realize that irony is snobbery. Irony is a class thing. Certainly, if you're so hungry, nothing is so bad it's good. Irony is infected in all American culture. It's the main thing in all culture, on television, in radio, everything. But so sometimes I get weary of it, but I'm being hypocritical myself because I celebrate irony in all my movies. That's the main subject matter, usually.

GROSS: How would you compare yourself as an artist to Pecker?

WATERS: Well, I never say the dreaded "art" word. I mean, that is up to history to decide, not even your peers, the real meaning of the word "art." I think I'm a film director and a writer, really. They're very different, in some ways because I knew the irony. I was in on it from the beginning. I wanted the New York world. I wanted show business to discover my movies, and I made it not very hard. I mean, I sent them press releases, so it's not exactly like they stumbled upon it in the beginning.

But at the same time, the subject matter that Pecker takes pictures of, I may have taken those same characters and turned them into my own characters through writing and exaggerating them and everything. I don't think Pecker exaggerates them or takes them and puts them into any other form than the form they exist in.

GROSS: And he was so interested in the details of his world. I have a feeling that you were kind of bored by the details of your world, so you made up this kind of fictional world that was larger than life.

WATERS: Certainly, I -- whatever I was obsessed by -- and obsession was one of the first feelings I remember as a child, and not negatively. It's not like I couldn't step on the crack or I'd break my mother's back. I wasn't that crazy, but...

GROSS: Well, that might be a compulsion, anyways.

WATERS: Well, yeah. But I wasn't obsessional neuroses, like, where I had to, you know, like, have tic syndromes and have to do things over and over, that kind of thing. But I did get very interested in things that I knew from the very beginning no other children were interested in, and my interest made my parents nervous. So I tended to keep it secret, and at the same time, I would exaggerate it and make it much more ludicrous and insane than it was in real life.

So maybe I was bored. I was bored in school, certainly. And it seems like after -- I learned how to read and write very well in grade school, but I didn't learn much else that they're supposed to teach you in school afterwards. But in junior high, I learned about scary girl delinquents that, really, I used much -- as much as reading and writing in my later work. And in college I really -- and in high school I learned about defiance and being against authority, which is certainly -- I also used in my movies. But after grade school, my interests were very much discouraged.

GROSS: Can you think of something that obsessed you as a kid that later entered your work?

WATERS: Well, I've talked about it so many times, about car accidents I used to play as a child, and I put it in "Female Trouble," and the people were wondering why I loved the movie "Crash," basically, but now I don't even look at a car accident. You know, once I -- it ends up in my movies, sometimes it's over with.

Certainly, "Hairspray," I was obsessed with this television show, "The Buddy Dean (ph) Show," that came on in Baltimore. But the kids that were on it every day, I drew them and exaggerated and made up insane biographies about how they stabbed the principal and stuff and -- just to try to amuse myself. So those were two that come to mind, certainly, in the beginning.

GROSS: John Waters is my guest, and his new movie is called "Pecker."

The character is named Pecker because, as a child, he only pecked at his food.

WATERS: Well, my -- my director of photography said, "Why isn't his name Picker, then," which is a point. Certainly, I knew that I was trying to have a title that I could push as far as I could go and get away with it. And I did get away with it, except in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, where they refused to run the title. But the -- I don't think we're playing there, anyway, so it really wasn't that much of an issue!

GROSS: What if your film was called "Pecker the Woodpecker"? Would they have not...

WATERS: Well, there was many titles. I mean, "Octopussy"...

GROSS: No, but I mean...

WATERS: That one still shocks me!

GROSS: Right.

WATERS: How did they ever get away with that? Today I don't think you could. I mean, that one seems more offensive than any title, really. But I brought up "Free Willy," which I think is -- is the most -- "willy" and "pecker," in a dirty way, are the same kind of -- very close in meaning. It's just the English way to say "pecker."

The Motion Picture Association of America initially turned it down, but only because they saw the title. They didn't know what it was or anything. We had a hearing, and they overturned it unanimously. They were very fair about it, actually.

GROSS: Do you like playing...

WATERS: But I had to go to court. It was like O.J. You know, I had to wait in the other room and then come in, and they didn't look at me. And I thought, "Oh, God! I've lost!"

GROSS: What did you have to say in defense of yourself in court?

WATERS: Well, we had lawyers who also talked, and then I gave a little speech saying that, you know, the word "pecker" is never found in obscenity. If you try to talk dirtily with the word "pecker," people would laugh in your face.

Men rarely refer to their penis as a "pecker." It's threatening word to men. It means "little," in a way. Women use the word mostly to their kids, I think. I think it's a word that makes women laugh and men uptight. It's also, as I said, no child ever angrily carved the word "pecker" in his school desk. I mean, it's not a hostile word at all, I don't think.

And I said, "In this case, the movie is about a young photographer who wants his good name back. And in this case, the good name is Pecker."

GROSS: Do you...

WATERS: And they -- you know, we left. They...

GROSS: Go ahead.

WATERS: They came back in, and they unanimously overturned it.

GROSS: Do you take a lot of pleasure in using a word that some people think of dirty, but -- as dirty, but on the other hand, it has -- it has different meanings, depending on the context, the whole color of the word is changed?

WATERS: Yeah, and I found a dictionary that I took with me that only had one definition. "Pecker: something -- a person who takes food with a sudden movement of his head." And I doubt anyone has said that word in that definition ever in the history of language, you know what I mean? "Oh, here" -- how could you say it that way? I don't know what it would be. I guess a bird is a pecker, but...

GROSS: A bird pecks at his food, yeah.

WATERS: Yeah, but "pecker" the word -- it said, "one who takes food with a sudden movement of his head." And I -- you know, I was -- and it had no other definition, and I neglected to tell the MPAA that, really, the dictionary copyright was 1957!

GROSS: My chicken...

WATERS: When they couldn't put those kind of words in the dictionary!

GROSS: John Waters is my guest, and his new movie is called "Pecker."

Now, one of the games in your movie -- I thought this was really a scream -- is a game called "Shopping for Others." Would you describe how it's played?

WATERS: Yeah. Well, it's really not an original idea. It came from my friend, Greg Grumman (ph), who plays himself in the movie, the photographer. And he plays this game with his chef in Beverly Hills. And you go into a food store, and you put in other shoppers' carts items that they would never, ever buy. When they don't see you, like, you put in Spam a rich person, or, like, I don't know, Preparation H to a muscle man -- you know, things that they'd be really embarrassed to have in their cart. And it causes anarchy in the supermarket, and it's a harmless form of food terrorism, really.

And I've done it, and people have done it to me in the Giant here, when I came back home. So you have to -- now I have to, every time I got to the supermarket, watch my cart to make sure that somebody doesn't do it to me!

GROSS: Oh, so this is a game that two adults play now that you know, huh?

WATERS: Yes. And they go further. Actually, what they do that I didn't put in because I thought it might cause a dangerous trend, is they unwrap a candy bar and hand it to a child in the back of the cart when the mother isn't looking, and then she turns around and says, "Hey, where'd you get that!" and smacks his hand and -- "Put that back!" And the child's, like, "Oh!" It's sitting there!

GROSS: A lot of the locales in your movie are, you know, diners and cheap bars. And one of the bars is called "The Pelt Room," and it's a lesbian strip joint with heterosexual male clientele. And so all the men in the joint are always verbally abused by the lesbian strippers as they dance.

WATERS: Right.

GROSS: It's very funny. How did you think this up?

WATERS: Well, I think, you know, basically, that one of the top male heterosexual fantasies is lesbians, and they believe that they're going to give them what they really need, when in reality, that is the last thing they really need. And Divine and I used to see a stripper at the Gaite Burlesque (ph) in Baltimore, who this is based on. Only she didn't even strip. She just came out nude. And she looked like Johnny Cash, and she would look at the audience and say, "What are you looking at!" And they loved it! And I never got over it. I've been talking about it for 30 years, so I finally put it in a movie.

GROSS: My guest is film director John Waters. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

Let's get back to our 1998 interview with film director John Waters about his movie "Pecker," which has just come out on video.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

You know, Pecker's grandmother in your movie is somebody who has, you know, a statue of the Virgin Mary, but she thinks the statue's talking to her.

WATERS: Well, she helps it along, like a ventriloquist.

GROSS: Exactly.

WATERS: I mean, she fools herself, really. She says, "Full of grace!" all the time. I think it's kind of reverent...

GROSS: Is that your voice...

WATERS: ... in a weird way.

GROSS: ... by the way, in the movie?

WATERS: Not mine, no. It is Jean Shertler (ph), the actress who is playing the part. But of course, at the end, there is a real miracle, and that is a heavenly voice that I interviewed about 30 women over the phone for the voice-over, and it was like Dial-a-Prayer! They called me every 10 minutes and did the Hail Mary for me, and I picked the voice over the phone.

GROSS: And did you know anybody who was like this, who had a statue of the Virgin and believed that she was talking?

WATERS: No, I did not know that. But I was a puppeteer when I was a child. And in Baltimore, people have religious statues a lot in their window. I mean, you see them really a lot. And I think I just put the two things together.

And my hobby is extreme Catholic behavior before the Reformation, and I have a lot of books about Mary-olatry, the extreme, undue worship of Mary. And I'm kind of obsessed by it because the people that get into Mary are really into her. I mean, this is a cult. This is beyond Jim Jones. I mean -- and there's a new cult that believes that Mary is better than Christ because she had him. And these debates to me are so strange and so surreal that I am very interested in it.

And if seems if there ever is going to be a real miracle, it will be Mary. She appears more than anybody else in phony ones, so why -- it goes along in thinking to think if there ever is going to be real one that it will be Mary.

GROSS: You were brought up Catholic, right?

WATERS: Half Catholic, yes. I went to private school and Catholic Sunday school, which is a real -- quite a combination, believe me, because they only have you one day a week, so they really got to get you there. You know, they only got you one hour, so the most extreme Catholic stuff they would tell you.

And I remember, as a child, feeling like I was on Mars or something. You know, all the nuns would tell us this stuff that I thought, "My God, I've never heard of these movies." You know, "I'm not going to do any of this stuff. I'm 6 years old." But -- you know what I'm saying? But they told me about all these mortal sins that I never even knew about, really, so they were my guidance counselors in filth, really.

GROSS: So this is how you got your interest developed in extreme Catholic behavior?

WATERS: Yes. Yeah, by seeing it as a child and being amazed. I mean, they would say, "You will burn in hell if you see these movies." How would I see these movies? I was 6. What was I going to go downtown to a burlesque house at 7 years old? You know, I don't know how they thought I was going to get there, even if I wanted to see them.

GROSS: You've described yourself as making moves about people who are crazy but think that they're sane. I think that's a pretty good description.

WATERS: Yeah, because so many people I know in New York are insane, and they're happy about it, and that's why they moved to New York, to celebrate that. And I would describe most of my friends that way. But to me, I make movies about people that think they're the most normal people in the world, but to me seem even more insane. And that's what interests me.

GROSS: You're in your early 50s now, and I'm wondering if your taste of if the kind of bad taste that you particularly enjoy is changing as you get older.

WATERS: Certainly it is. Somehow I ended up main a happy movie about pubic hair, harassment, lesbian strippers, trade hags and talking virgin mothers. Who would have ever thought you could make a happy movie about that 20 years ago? Certainly, the times are completely different than when I made "Pink Flamingos." There's not a cultural war going on.

American humor is bad taste now, and we have exported it all over the world. It has infected humor all over the world. So the American people's taste in humor, in everything from rap music to television, everything, is so much closer to what I started out in that I feel like I retired from the battle of filth a long time ago and that my Imperial margarine crown of filth is firmly placed on my head forever. And I don't really feel the need to try to top anything I've done. I think it would fail if I did.

I think that's up to the new kids, you know, to make movies to get on my generation's nerves, like this movie, "Happiness," that's coming out that's an amazing movie. It's the best movie I've seen in, oh, 5 or 10 years, I think, by Todd Selatz (ph). But I don't feel the need to try to do that when I don't really feel that at this point in my life.

GROSS: Is there anything that you find you're particularly alienated by in, you know, youth culture today?

WATERS: The only kind of movies I have trouble with is romantic comedies, you know? They're not my favorite genre. When an audience goes, "Aww!" I start to cringe. No -- am I alienated by anything? Just stupidity, really, is the only thing. And I've had enough success that -- in my life that I can finally isolate myself from that. I very seldom have to meet people that I would hate anymore, which is the only luxury you can really work for. It's much better than any material luxury you can ever have in your world is to never have to come in contact with people that will get on your nerves.

GROSS: When you see teenagers walking around with, you know, piercings all over their face and God knows where else, and tattoos all over, what does it make you think about? Do you relate to that?

WATERS: I think -- I think they look cool, some of them. I think, basically, though -- I tell all the parents, "Don't care if they get piercing. That grows back." I mean, it's the tattoos that -- I've said this before, but it's true. Someone will make a fortune taking all these tattoos off this generation because no matter how butch or how beautiful or how cool you look at 20 with tattoos, I promise you at 50 you will look worn out when you take your shirt off and you have a faded tattoo of barbed wire around your arm. At 50, it will not be a good look.

But -- and if I was young, I would of course have had piercings. I mean, I think -- the tongue I like, and I think the eyebrow one is my favorite. Or -- but now they're branding. That's the new thing, you know?

GROSS: Right.

WATERS: So I think piercing -- and eventually, they're going to have Ubangi lips. I think -- you remember that, like in "National Geographic"?

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah.

WATERS: That I think is the next thing that will be coming on the college campuses.

GROSS: It's kind of a plate in the lip, extending...

WATERS: Yeah, the plate...

GROSS: ... the bottom lip.

WATERS: ... in the lip, yeah.

GROSS: John Waters is my guest, and his new movie is called "Pecker."

You've been managing to make movies with happy endings, no matter how improbable they are, and no matter how they might seem to contrast with the larger subject matter. What do you enjoy about that, about finding the happy ending in this insanity that you're creating?

WATERS: Because if we can find happy endings to our own insanity, what a perfect life that would be. I'm an optimist, a very guarded optimist, and I believe there are happy endings. And so I like to show them. It -- my happy endings are not exactly what many people would think of a happy ending, but in "Pecker," I mean, really, New Yorker and the blue-collar sort of Baltimore people all get together and have a party at the end. And that's my idea of a perfect bar.. If I could ever go to a blue-collar bar where it was gay people, straight people, go-go boys, go-go girls, all classes of people, and Patty Hearst dancing on a table, I'm in heaven.

GROSS: And that's not the kind of happy ending where the audience would go, "Aww!"

WATERS: Well, maybe some of my audience might go, "Aww!" but I'm not sure in what way they would exactly mean it. No, it's not "Sleepless in Seattle" ending, no.

GROSS: One of the people who you discovered was Ricki Lake, who starred in "Hairspray," and now, of course, she's a national celebrity with her daytime talk show, et cetera.

WATERS: Right.

GROSS: And you know, she's lost weight and gotten cosmetic surgery. And in a way, I feel like she's repudiated the kind of character that you created around her, you know, someone who was consider, like, overweight and unattractive by certain mainstream people, but she was so comfortable with herself and had such kind of joie de vivre and was such a good dancer that she ended up being really attractive, if you really saw her...

WATERS: Well, I think...

GROSS: ... for who she was.

WATERS: I think she sold that part, and that was certainly the party of Tracy Turnblatt (ph). I think, physically, she probably feels a lot happier when she's not fat. And I know from Divine dropping dead from being overweight, certainly health-wise it is a good thing for her.

But when I see Ricki, I'll be honest. She still tells me, you know, "Look, I lost weight." I said, "Ricki, I don't care." You know, "I'm happy for you that you did, but you could weight 200 or 80. I don't really care about how much you weight." You know, "It has nothing to do with how I like you."

But I think she feels better about herself. I think she looks great. She was at the premier in New York looking quite beautiful. And I think because she played Tracy Turnblatt, that does not mean that she wanted to live the life of Tracy Turnblatt. Certainly, it was not good for her health to weigh 250 pounds when you're 20 years old.

GROSS: You've always been based in Baltimore and...

WATERS: Right.

GROSS: ... some of the people you've always worked with, like you, still live in Baltimore. At least, I assume they do because I know that a couple of them have been working for "Homicide," which is...

WATERS: Certainly, my...

GROSS: ... the TV series shot in Baltimore.

WATERS: ... dearest -- my dearest friend, Pat Moran (ph), who cast many of my movies and -- all of them, really -- she won the Emmy the other week for best casting of "Homicide."

GROSS: Oh!

WATERS: Vincent Pirennio (ph), who's done my production design on (INAUDIBLE) is the head production designer of "Homicide." Behind the scenes, many of the people on the crew have worked with me in many, many, many of the movies, so -- and "Homicide" is my favorite television show. So I think it's so great where I live is known for bad taste, homicide. You know, it's kind of the reverse of what the city 20 years ago would have wanted to be known for.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GROSS: John Waters, recorded last year after the release of his film, "Pecker." It's just come out on video and DVD. He's hoping to shoot his new film, "Cecil B. Demented (ph)," in the fall.

We'll hear more about "Homicide" in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

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Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, D.C.
Guest: John Waters
High: Filmmaker John Waters. His latest film is "Pecker" about a young amateur photographer who becomes the darling of the New York art world. Waters is known for his independent, off-beat films such as "Pink Flamongos," "Female Trouble," and "Polyester."
Spec: Entertainment; Movie Industry; Lifestyle; Culture; John Waters

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Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Filmmaker John Waters

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MAY 21, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 052102NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Writer Cathleen Schine
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:30

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The new movie, "The Love Letter," opened today, starring Cate Capshaw, Ellen Degeneres and Tom Selleck. It's based on a 1995 novel by Cathleen Schine. On this archive edition, we have an interview with Schine about the book.

In the novel, Helen, a middle-aged divorced woman, receives a passionate but anonymous love letter accidentally in the mail. Although she knows she's not the person the letter was intended for, she's intoxicated by it. She becomes obsessed with trying to figure out who wrote the letter and who was supposed to get it. In a series of comic errors, the letter inspires a romance between Helen and a much younger man who works in the book store Helen owns.

In 1995, I asked Schine to read the love letter that sets everything in motion in the novel.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

CATHLEEN SCHINE, AUTHOR, "LOVE LETTER": "Dear Goat: How does one fall in love? Do you trip? Do you stumble, lose your balance and drop to the sidewalk, graze your knee, graze your heart? Do you crash to the stony ground? Is there a precipice from which you float over the edge forever? I know I'm in love when I see you. I know when I long to see you. Not a muscle has moved. Leaves hang unruffled by any breeze. The air is still. I have fallen in love without taking a step. When did this happen? I haven't even blinked.

"I'm on fire. Is that too banal for you? It's not, you know. You'll see. It's what happens. It's what matters. I'm on fire. I no longer eat. I forget to eat. Food looks silly to me, irrelevant, if I even notice it. But I notice nothing. My thoughts are full and raging, a house full of brothers related by blood, feuding blood feuds.

"I threw the book out the window last night. I tried to forget. You are all wrong for me, I know it, but I no longer care for my thoughts unless they're thoughts of you. When I'm close to you, in your presence, I feel your hair brush my cheek when it does not. I look away from you sometimes. Then I look back. When I tie my shoes, when I peel an orange, when I drive my car, when I lie down each night without you, I remain, as ever, Ram (ph)."

GROSS: What effect does this love letter have on Helen, who accidentally ends up with it?

SCHINE: Well, it's very confusing, at first, and startling, and I think frightening, in some way, partly because it's a mystery. She doesn't know who sent it. She doesn't know to whom it was sent. She -- it's very, very personal, and yet it's not -- it doesn't relate to her. And yet she's drawn into some kind of very passionate personal affair.

And so I think the -- it's both titillating and makes her feel guilty at the same time, and makes her feel like a voyeur. And she starts imagining, looking at all of her customers and looking at the people who work for her and thinking about them in a new -- in a new light.

GROSS: There's a 20-year-old man who works for the summer...

SCHINE: Right.

GROSS: ... in Helen's book store. What effect does the letter have on him when he comes upon it accidentally?

SCHINE: Well, you know, he has this boss who's very powerful and flirtatious...

GROSS: Helen.

SCHINE: ... Helen. And she's a tough cookie, and he's kind of bowled over by her and resentful at the same time. But she is very flirtatious, and her way of controlling people is a kind of seduction, not necessarily sexual but it's the way she sells books. It's the way she operates in the world.

And this letter, I think, kind of -- when he sees it, he sees it accidentally, and he assumes it's for Helen or from Helen, that it has something to do with Helen, and it suddenly puts her in a completely new light or it crystallizes something that perhaps he's been feeling subconsciously for a while. And he thinks of her as -- as someone involved in sex and love and passion. And at that point, he falls for her.

GROSS: What did you draw on when you wrote this letter?

SCHINE: Well, I actually received a letter when I was -- it was in the summer, and I was just beginning the book, and I had no idea of putting any letters in the book. It was just going to be about a book store and about a flirt, and that's all I really knew. I didn't even know who she was flirting with or who she was going to fall in -- I knew nothing. I just knew the premise.

And I was sitting on my bed, and I had all this mail. I was at my mother's house, and all this mail had been forwarded to me from New York, and I had tons and tons of mail. And I opened it all up and, you know, it was interesting, boring, whatever -- things from relatives, from publishers, editors, all kinds of things.

And when I was done looking at everything, I noticed this very weird, crumpled-up, twisted piece of paper which clearly had been accidentally shoved into one of the envelopes, picked up with something. And I opened it, and it was a letter, and it said, "Dear Goat," and it was signed, "As ever, Ram," and it was typed.

And it was not a love letter, it was an answer. It was a letter answering another -- it was a letter after the person who had written this one had been broken up with. It was an answer to a kiss-off letter. And it was -- it was very upsetting. It was very passionate and very, very bitter, very literary -- you know, all these allusions to T.S. Eliot and what page on what edition you should look for which insult and things like that.

And there was -- there was stuff -- I mean, I knew it wasn't for me because there was stuff about alarm clocks and, you know, all these allusions to very -- to personal little incidents that had occurred between these two people, and I didn't know what they were and -- but even so, I felt that somehow it had come to me. It was mine. I was guilty in some way.

And I also thought, "Well, now, which of my friends is having an affair?" because this is the letter of two people having some kind of illicit affair. And then I couldn't tell if it was from a man to a woman, a woman to a man, a man to a man or a woman to a woman. All I could tell was this letter came from someone in New York. I knew it wasn't from my brother in California. It wasn't a California letter. This is -- this is the only identification I could make.

GROSS: Did you ever find out?

SCHINE: No, I've never found out. It tortured me for days. I didn't tell anyone. I was very embarrassed because I thought, "What if it is one of my friends, and I know this secret about them that I don't want to know?" And I became obsessed with it, and finally, at one point, I just tore it into shreds.

GROSS: Like your character does in the book.

SCHINE: Just like my character. And I threw it away, and then I called my husband and I told him about it after I'd torn it up. And he said, "Are you crazy? Get it back! It's really interesting." And I said, "No, no. It's bad. I don't want to know." And then I was sitting there thinking, and I thought, "Oh, this is a novel. This is a mystery, and this goes -- this is a -- this is my book."

GROSS: Did you ever write or get passionate love letters?

SCHINE: Certainly not recently.

GROSS: Well, you've been married a long time.

SCHINE: Yeah. I did -- I guess I -- yes, and one -- one of these cases was sort of interesting, I think, because I was -- I was -- I guess it was my senior year of high school, and I went away for the summer. It was some time around then. And I had a boyfriend who was Israeli and was living in Connecticut, and he -- and he was blind, and he was there to get operations on his eyes, hoping that they would get better.

And I went away for the summer to Italy to some summer program, and I missed him terribly. And I would write these very passionate love letters, which, of course, had to be read out loud to him by the family he was staying with, who were just these regular suburban people, you know, very, very nice, obviously, to take in this guy.

And so here was this nice, middle-class, middle-aged, regular, conventional woman who had to read, you know, this -- this -- these hot and heavy teenage love letters to this Israeli. He was furious, and I of course, I was -- you know, when you're that age, you just don't think and don't care. He was really very annoyed. And then he'd have to dictate his letters back to me, so -- so he would sort of make fun of me in the -- so that -- that was very interesting.

And later, I used to write -- I had a boyfriend who lived in another -- in another city, and we would write. And I drew on some of those letters for this book. I still have them. They're quite funny.

GROSS: My guest is Cathleen Schine, author of "The Love Letter." We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

Let's get back to our 1995 interview with Cathleen Schine about her novel, "The Love Letter." The new movie adaptation opened today.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

The main character, Helen, was in a car accident when she was young, when she was 16.

SCHINE: Right.

GROSS: I know that also happened to you...

SCHINE: Right.

GROSS: ... when you were young. I'd like you to read the paragraph about the accident in your novel, "The Love Letter."

SCHINE: Sure. OK.

"At 16, the accident had made her merely angry. Lying in the hospital, in the emergency room, as doctors tried to stanch the flow of blood from her lacerated face, she had wondered if her belt, her favorite belt, was ruined. It was so inconvenient, a car crash. How dare this happen? She had almost died, but all she knew, as she almost died, as a prickly irritation, as if death were a curfew, a punishment she could talk her parents out of.

"Now, 25 years later, she understood that she had almost died. She had even gotten used to the idea. But familiarity bred horror, not contempt. Death lived in the world. Disaster descended from the mountaintop. They were real, death and disaster. Worse, they were plausible.

"If one let one's wild teenage boyfriend drive one around a sharp curve on a country road at night at 70 miles an hour, one went through a windshield. Therefore one drove oneself. This was Helen's credo. It extended beyond automobiles. She could have crocheted it on a pillow, hung a sign in the store, tattooed it on her chest: `I'll drive.'"

GROSS: What happened to you when you were in your car accident?

SCHINE: Pretty much the same thing. I've never written about the car accident. I've never used it, although I've often thought of using it. But it really took a long time to kind of settle in. I was 16 and, you know, I was out with some friends, and we were driving too fast. And I went through the windshield. And as I left the driveway, as they picked me up, my father said, "Wear your seatbelt," and I said, "Oh, Dad!" and didn't put it on and went through the windshield. I broke my neck. In fact, I broke the same vertebrae that Christopher Reeve broke.

GROSS: Oh!

SCHINE: Yeah, but mine, I think, just cracked, so I was in traction for a month, and then I was OK. And my face was all cut up, and I really actually almost died. And I literally remember lying there thinking, "I hope my belt is OK. I hope it's not too bloody," and then having a fit when I wasn't allowed to go to Woodstock. I mean, I was in the hospital with things screwed into my skull, called the Crutchfield (ph) tongs, holding me down...

GROSS: Oh!

SCHINE: ... in traction, and I wanted to go to Woodstock. And I kept saying, "Put my in a body cast. This is -- I can go. My friends will put me in the back of a van. It'll be fine." And my doctor said -- my doctor said, "Your neck is broken." And I said, "No, it's not. I broke my top two vertebrae." And he said, "Your vertebrae are your neck. You have a broken neck."

GROSS: Well, your first novel, "Alice in Bed," was about a teenager who spends about a year in the hospital with this mysterious and very painful paralysis of her legs.

SCHINE: Right.

GROSS: And...

SCHINE: That's -- and that is autobiographical. I was -- it -- what it really was from, what it turned out later it was from was taking cortisone for something else that I had, and it was a side effect. And it was really nightmarish, and that book is kind of a black comedy, as well it should be. It was -- it was quite something. But you know, writing about it was really sort of fun.

GROSS: You know, your character, after her car accident, she -- her motto is that she's going to drive? What does she say?

SCHINE: "I'll drive."

GROSS: "I'll drive." So were you changed in that way, too, that you wanted to be in more control?

SCHINE: Well, I -- yes, I wanted to be in more control. But the difference between me and Helen, my character, is that Helen actually is in more control.

GROSS: Oh, you just wanted to be!

SCHINE: I see myself as a kind of lazy perfectionist. I remember sitting in my living room one day, and I was looking up, and the curtains on the curtain rod were cock-eyed. Like, one side was way over to the side, where it shouldn't have been. And I thought, "That's awful, and that's driving me crazy." And then I thought, "That has been driving me crazy for two years, and I haven't touched it." And so that's -- that's the difference between Helen and me. Helen would have gotten on a ladder and fixed it, and I just stare at it and think, "That's a problem."

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GROSS: Cathleen Schine, recorded in 1995, after the publication of her novel, "The Love Letter." The novel is being republished to coincide with the movie adaptation, which opened today. Schine's novel, "The Evolution of Jane (ph)," is due out in paperback in September.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, D.C.
Guest: Cathleen Schine
High: Writer Cathleen Schine. Her 1995 book "The Love Letter" has been adapted into a new film. Schine's other books include "Alice in Bed," "To the Bird House," and "Rameau's Niece." She has also written for "The New York Times Boo Review," "Vogue" and "The Village Voice."
Spec: Entertainment; Lifestyle; Culture; Cathleen Schine

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Writer Cathleen Schine

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MAY 21, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 052103NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Series Finale of "Homicide: Life on the Street"
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:50

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

The final episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street," airs tonight, bringing to a close what our TV critic, David Bianculli, describes as one of the best drama series of the '90s. Before he reviews tonight's episode, we're going to hear an excerpt from our interview with "Homicide"'s co-creator and executive producer, Tom Fontana, recorded just six weeks after the series began.

Before "Homicide," Fontana spent five years on "St. Elsewhere" as a writer and producer. He went on to create the HBO prison series, "Oz." Tonight's concluding episode of "Homicide" focuses on the character of Tim Bayliss, played by Kyle Secor. Let's hear a scene from an early episode, in which Bayliss was a rookie homicide detective learning the ropes from his more experienced partner, Frank Pembleton (ph), played by Andre Braugher. Here they are in the car together.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET")

KYLE SECOR: You know something? You said to me something the other day. You said that I would never be a homicide detective because I don't have a killer's mind.

ANDRE BRAUGHER: Uh-huh.

SECOR: So do you?

BRAUGHER: Do I what? Do I have a killer's mind?

SECOR: Yeah.

BRAUGHER: Do me a favor. Take a look outside there. Tell me what you see.

SECOR: Now, let's see. I see people hanging out on their stoops. I see some trees. I see a grocery store.

BRAUGHER: OK. I look out here and I see the same stuff, but all this stuff has my name written on it, just like the criminal. I see unlocked cars. I see snatchable pocketbooks. I see windows open just a crack.

SECOR: What does this have to do with murder? (BRAUGHER LAUGHS) That's funny?

BRAUGHER: Don't you get that?

SECOR: What?

BRAUGHER: That's my point exactly, Bayliss.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GROSS: Here's an excerpt of our 1993 interview with "Homicide"'s co-creator, Tom Fontana.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

What are some of the burdens that an opening episode of a series has to carry?

TOM FONTANA, "HOMICIDE" CO-CREATOR: Well, you know, it's -- it's very tough to write the first episode because what you have to do is you have to introduce 10 to 12 different characters. Introducing those characters, defining those characters in a very short amount of time is very difficult.

Then the added burden is, you know, you want the -- you want the audience to like the 10 or 12 characters that you've introduced because episodic television is about seeing friends. You know, every week you say, "Oh, let's go see what those knuckleheads at `Cheers' at doing." And so you want -- you want the audience to not necessarily identify so much as appreciate the characters on your show. So that's difficult because you've only got 47 minutes or something like that.

Then what you want to do is to try to come up with a story -- or stories, in the particular case of "Homicide" -- that will indicate the kind of stories that you're going to tell on a week-to-week basis. Now, in the "Homicide," the first episode of "Homicide," we didn't really emphasize the story, and it wasn't really till the second episode that we really started to say, "OK, well, here's the ABCD side of the show." You know, "Here's a little journey that you're going to take each week with these people."

One of the reasons we did that in the first episode is, again, because we wanted to say to the audience, "Whatever your expectation is of a cop show, you ain't gonna get it here." And as dangerous as that is because, you know, most people want to see things they're familiar with, we thought it was important to say that to the audience, to not lie to the audience and say, "Well, you're going to get to see them arrest somebody every week, and it's going to be," you know, "like a typical cop show."

GROSS: So what were some of the expectations that you felt you had to dash early on?

FONTANA: Well, I think that, for example, the show -- the emphasis of the show is not on solving the murders. The emphasis is on the relationship between the partners. And so you might spend -- whereas on a regular show you'd spend, you know, 45 pages dealing with the murder and 10 pages dealing with the kind of buddy side of it, you know, the joking and the, "Oh" -- you know, jump in the car and all that stuff, we do the complete opposite. Most of it is about people kind of living their lives, and every once in a while they step over a dead body.

The other thing is, is that we're not doing any car chases. We're not doing any gun shoot-outs because most homicide detectives get there after the murder. You know, they're not a part of the action, the way a uniformed cop would be. And theirs is a much more intellectual kind of job than any other policeman. They're there doing research and investigation.

And so the rhythm of their particular job is very different from anything -- you know, most murder -- most homicide shows, you see the cops, and they're running, and they're chasing, and they're -- you know, and they're facing the bad guy and all that stuff. And in real life, it just doesn't happen that way.

And because we were coming off of David Simon's (ph) book and because we felt we had an obligation to the Baltimore homicide squad to depict them in an honest way, we kind of abandoned all that television story-telling.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GROSS: Tom ntana is the co-creator and executive producer of "Homicide." Our interview was recorded in 1993.

Our TV critic, David Bianculli, has a review of tonight's episode after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Our TV critic, David Bianculli, has been praising the TV series "Homicide" ever since it premiered in 1993. Let's hear what he has to say about tonight's final episode.

DAVID BIANCULLI: Tonight wasn't supposed to be the very last "Homicide," at least not in the mind of producer Tom Fontana, who wrote it. Instead, it was intended as the season finale, with a cliff-hanger to keep people interested until the fall.

But Fontana, one of the writer-producers of "St. Elsewhere," has been here before. Several times on "St. Elsewhere" and one or two times already on "Homicide," Fontana and his colleagues produced season finales that could double as farewell episodes if NBC canceled the series.

Last week, long after tonight's "Homicide" was written and photographed, NBC canceled the series, and once again Fontana was prepared for the worst. So tonight's "Homicide," in many respects, serves as a fitting swan song. It goes all the way back to the show's very first episode in 1993, when a rookie cop named Tim Bayliss joined the squad and focuses on how his character has changed in the last seven years.

Bayliss, played brilliantly by Kyle Secor, has been through a lot. When he started, he was a wide-eyed rookie paired with the squad's intense hot-shot detective, Frank Pembleton. Pembleton was played by Andre Braugher, the best actor on TV at the time, and Braugher and Secor were as good an acting team as their characters were as a detective team.

Over the years, Bayliss flirted with bisexuality and Zen Buddhism. He solved dozens of tough cases, but remained haunted by the ones that got away, especially the case of Adina Watson (ph), a young girl whose death he never really solved.

During one manic moment years ago, he robbed a store at gunpoint just to see what it felt like. More recently, he's killed a man in self-defense, mourned the departure of his long-time partner and wrestled with the meaning of life.

Tonight it all comes to a head. A serial killer caught last year by Bayliss and Renee Sheppard (ph), played by Michael Michele, is released on a legal technicality. Bayliss is furious and feels isolated, even when Renee tries to comfort him.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MICHAEL MICHELE: Hey, partner. Got a call, a slam-dunk. Corner boy kills corner boy, gets caught holding the gun. What say we head over to Fayette (ph) Street and wrap this baby up.

SECOR: No, no. You go ahead, Renee.

MICHELE: Still stewing about Luke Ryland (ph)? Me, too. Gives me the dry heaves knowing a guy like Ryland's out on the street. What can we do, right, except move on to the next case. (SECOR LAUGHS) Did I say something funny?

SECOR: You just sounded like Frank.

MICHELE: The almighty Pembleton.

SECOR: Yeah. You can't believe how many times Frank and I chewed over a case, spat it out, tried to get that nasty taste out of our mouths. We'd weigh the value of every life lost, tried to figure out what it all really means, you know, this whole life thing.

MICHELE: He was your partner.

SECOR: Yeah.

MICHELE: He was your best friend.

SECOR: No, Frank didn't have best friends. I worked with him for six years, and we've spoken maybe two times since he left here. That's it. You know, and he quit here once before. Got on his high horse, he rode on out of here. So I thought, you know, he'd come back this time, too. But -- ah, he's really gone for good now.

MICHELE: And you need his advice.

SECOR: Yeah.

MICHELE: Give him a call.

SECOR: Yeah, maybe I'll call.

MICHELE: I'm sorry I'm not Frank. I'm sorry I'm not someone you can talk to.

SECOR: What're you talking about? I can talk to you.

MICHELE: Yeah, I know, but it's different. I mean, you loved him, didn't you.

SECOR: Yeah. I did. I'm -- I loved him.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BIANCULLI: This is a great episode of "Homicide," and ends with a scene so strong and so disturbing that it's a sin the story won't be continued and concluded next season. As a matter of fact, I'm begging NBC to allow Fontana and company one last shot to tie up loose ends. Gather the cast back together and do one "Homicide" telemovie for next season solving the squad room's final murder case, the one that end's tonight's cliffhanger.

After all, if CBS can give us a reunion telemovie of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," which it's doing tomorrow night, surely NBC can find a way to make one last "Homicide." The show deserves it, and certainly the fans deserve it.

What made "Homicide" so great from start to finish was its intensity and its honest. The cases were there to be solved, like in any cop show, but these detectives didn't always solve them, and they spent a lot of time grumbling about their jobs and arguing with each other, just like real people do. They even quit their jobs and moved on or died or were killed, the sort of stuff that happens in real life but rarely happens to regular characters on series TV. It was also a racially diverse show, another TV rarity.

Best of all, "Homicide" had a memory. Everything that happened to these characters -- their marriages and divorces, their triumphs and failures, their fights and fears -- kept shaping them and kept popping up. Tonight's show is only the latest example. And, apparently, the last.

Don't miss tonight's "Homicide: Life on the Street." After tonight, you can miss it all you want. Personally, I'll miss it a lot.

GROSS: David Bianculli is TV critic for the "New York Daily News."

FRESH AIR senior producer today was Roberta Shoruck (ph). I'm Terry Gross.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline:
Guest:
High: TV critic David Bianculli comments on tonight's series finale of NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street."
Spec: Entertainment; Television and Radio; Lifestyle; Culture; David Bianculli

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Series Finale of "Homicide: Life on the Street"
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.