Other segments from the episode on January 28, 2019
Transcript
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Ever been waiting for a subway and feel the impulse to hop off the platform and wander down the tracks or pop a manhole cover on a city street and go exploring the sewers? That's the kind of exploring our guest Will Hunt likes to do, looking below the surface of streets and of the earth. He's spent years prowling the inner recesses of subways and sewers, the catacombs of Paris, abandoned mines and nuclear bunkers and caves where ancient societies held religious rituals. His new book shares some of what he's found, like people living in subway tunnels and underground art in Paris. And he explores why some people just seem compelled to burrow into the ground.
Will Hunt's writing and photography have been published in The Economist, The Paris Review and Outside magazine. He spoke to FRESH AIR's Dave Davies about his new book "Underground: A Human History Of The Worlds Beneath Our Feet."
DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Will Hunt, welcome to FRESH AIR. You describe in this book getting interested in things under the ground. And being on a subway platform, and you see these two guys emerge from the tracks, like, with headlamps on. And they just walk up the stairs. Who were they? What was going on?
WILL HUNT: So these were urban explorers. This is a tribe of people in New York City who have dedicated their lives to exploring and documenting the lost and forgotten parts of the city. And I just became totally fascinated with them. They were these sort of urban outlaw poets, and I love that they sort of saw a version of New York City that was invisible to everyone else. They knew the city's secrets. They knew the subterranean rivers and the abandoned subway stations and all of these places that people on the surface never think about. So I just became fixated on them and started poking around with them in tunnels and sewers and in other places out of sight.
DAVIES: Right, so you became one of these explorers. How easy is it to hop into the subway and disappear?
HUNT: Practically, it's not so difficult. It's just a matter of going down late at night and waiting for a train to pass and deciding to step over the do not cross or enter track sign and just heading down the catwalk. I would say, psychologically, it's much more difficult. It's very frightening down there, and there's a lot of - there's a lot of pressure. And you're thinking a million things at once. And you're listening for trains, and you're listening for track workers down there. And it's illegal of course. So if you get caught, then the consequences are dire.
DAVIES: And rats.
HUNT: There are rats indeed. You know, there are a lot of hazards down there. I mean, when you get into tunnels that have a - sort of a tight corner, that can be very scary 'cause you can't see the trains coming around the corner so easily. There are these passengerless (ph) garbage trains that come through. And they don't really run on a schedule, so they can come up behind you at any time. I was fortunate enough never to have witnessed one of those, but that's always in the back of your mind. It can be pretty treacherous down there.
DAVIES: So what would you do when you were in the subway and a train came?
HUNT: This was always unnerving to be down on subway tracks and to have a train come up behind you, right? You - it registers first as this kind of, like, sort of subsonic rumble at your feet. And then you hear - or, rather, you feel wind. And suddenly, there's this blast of light coming behind you. And what you have to do is jump up on the catwalk and run down the catwalk and find an emergency alcove where you can hide yourself while the train rushes past. And the truth is, you sort of plan for trains passing. What I would do is I would enter the subway tracks and run down the catwalk and kind of hover around the emergency exit alcove and wait for a train to come. And the train would come, and I would still be hidden. And then once the train was gone, I would be able to safely continue down the tracks.
DAVIES: And what did it feel like when the train went by?
HUNT: Most people don't really have the experience of being near a train when it's moving at full speed. You know, a train slows down at a platform usually. So when you're in the tracks and you're kind of crouched in an emergency exit alcove, the train is hurtling through the dark. So you're getting this really intense sound and wind and this kind of rush of metal. And it's - you know, your heart is pounding. It's very intense.
DAVIES: What kind of gear do you need to do this, to stay safe?
HUNT: I would just go down with - wearing dark clothes and a headlamp or a flashlight and just shoes with good traction. That's all you really need. I should say that I don't condone doing this. This is - it's very dangerous and a good way to get arrested. And I don't want people listening to this and thinking they should go and run down the tracks at night.
DAVIES: You described some fascinating stuff you discover. There were dangers and difficulties, but what did you discover that fascinated you?
HUNT: Well, there's just so much beneath the streets of New York City that people walking around on the surface don't ever think about. I mean, one of the things that I fell in love with right off the bat was this graffiti writer called Revs who, during the 1990s, spent six years writing his autobiography on the walls of subway tunnels, which is to say between platforms in the sort of dark spaces that are hard to reach and covered in soot. It's like the no man's land.
And he would go down and put up a 5- by 7-foot rectangle of white or yellow paint and then write a little vignette from his childhood on the panel. And he would number them within a series and then sign it. And there are 235 of these panels scattered throughout New York City. And when I was first starting to go down into the tunnels, I would come across these pages. And they were - I just thought it was such a beautiful and mysterious art project.
DAVIES: And you discovered there are people there. You refer to the mole people. Who are they?
HUNT: So the mole people are people who have taken up residence in the underground of New York City. During the 1980s, they were sort of everywhere in the underground of the city. And today there are many fewer of them. There's a tunnel that runs under Riverside Park. That is where they used to live, and they had built an amazing shantytown down in the tunnel. It was called the Freedom Tunnel. And during the '80s, there were - oh, I don't know - over a hundred of them. Today there are not so many. But there was one night where I went down into that tunnel with a group of urban explorers. And we had - we celebrated the 50th birthday party of a woman named Brooklyn who had been living in that tunnel for 28 years, she said. We went down with whiskey and cake. And we sort of sat around on the stairs outside of her home down there. And...
DAVIES: And could you just describe the home? Where was she living?
HUNT: It was in the eaves of the tunnel kind of in this alcove that was accessible by an iron staircase. She called it her igloo. And, you know, there was a mattress and some sort of bent pieces of furniture. She was a really amazing woman, very charismatic and dynamic. That night, she spent hours singing and dancing. And it was a really great party.
DAVIES: So you went through the subways, and you went through sewers, too - right? - a fair amount.
HUNT: I did. So I sort of started following around an urban explorer called Steve Duncan, who is kind of the master urban explorer in the city. And when I - he took me down into a sewer in Brooklyn kind of near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And we climbed down, and it was sort of an extraordinary experience. At first, the sewer felt kind of repulsive in the way you would imagine. You know, it's got this funk to it. There are these long, stringy strands of bacteria down there that urban explorers called snotsicles.
So I'm kind of repulsed at first, but Steve tells me that there's a stream flowing through the wastewater in this tunnel. And so I'm - we're walking up and down this sewer pipe. And there's something really beautiful about knowing New York City as this big growling metropolis - this, like, big, tough place and then to be under the streets feeling this ancient stream flowing around your boots. The city felt very vulnerable. It was like I was making eye contact with the city. It was a kind of beautiful moment.
DAVIES: So there are sewers. There are subways. There are underground streams in cities. A lot of people don't realize this. As you became more familiar with this, did it just change your perception of the city you lived in? Did you talk about it with friends? Did you say, hey, you don't know what's, like, a block away here? Did you find yourself wanting to lift every manhole and go down it?
HUNT: I absolutely did. I - there was a time when I would just move through the city in a kind of delirium. I was - you know, every manhole, every doorway, every stairway going down into the dark felt like a potential portal into this, like, separate world. My friends at the time would get so tired of me telling stories about all these spaces. I remember finding a building in Brooklyn Heights that looked exactly like every other building on the street except that the windows were blacked out and the door was made of dark steel. And as it turns out, the building was a subway vent, and it had been disguised. And it was just this beautiful thing of recognizing that hidden in the sort of texture of the city all around you are these portals into this, like, hidden layer. And, you know, the city, it started to feel really magical to me.
DAVIES: Our guest is Will Hunt. He has written a new book about life underneath the earth. It's called "Underground: A Human History Of The Worlds Beneath Our Feet." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAN AUERBACH'S "HEARTBROKEN, IN DISREPAIR")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Will Hunt. He is a writer who has a fascination with things beneath the surface of the earth. His new book is "Underground: A Human History Of The Worlds Beneath Our Feet." You have a fascinating chapter about the underground in Paris, and you describe an expedition that you and - what? - three or four friends took - a two-to-three-day trip where you were going to basically traverse the city of Paris south to north, if I recall, underground, right?
HUNT: That's correct. This was a few years ago. I was with a team of six urban explorers. And the plan was to go from one edge of the city to the other using only subterranean infrastructure. And we started on the southern edge of the city, and our path was going to be through the catacombs and then through utility tunnels to go under the Seine and then ultimately into the sewers. So we went down on a June night starting in the catacombs.
We were aware of a number of hazards. It was all illegal, of course, so we had to avoid the police. We were also aware of sort of bad air that sometimes collects in unventilated underground tunnel, so we had these, you know, toxic air detectors. But most of all, we were concerned about the weather. This was June in Paris, which means rain. And we were nervous about going into the sewers and getting caught in a rainstorm. The way the sewer system works in Paris - if you're in a sewer collector during a rainstorm, you could get caught in a flash flood.
So we start in the catacombs, kind of winding through this maze of very beautiful stony tunnels. We emerge in the catacombs and head into the utility tunnels and slip under the Seine. And as we're making the transition from the utility tunnels to the sewers, we have cell phone service for a second. And we get a message from a friend of ours who had agreed to be the sort of weather sentinel. And he says it looks to be a wet night. So now we're standing in a sewer collector, and we have a decision to make. Are we going to push through this collector and risk getting caught in a rainstorm? Or are we going to to give up the expedition and turn back? And at this point, we'd been underground for 30 hours. So we all went around the circle and said, you know, we have to do this. There's no turning back.
So over the next hour or so, we were kind of tiptoeing down this sewer collector, and it's this big echoing pipe with a channel of sewage running down the center. And it was extremely intense. Occasionally there would be these jets of water coming out of the walls - and everything is magnified down there. So a jet of water would come come out of a pipe in the walls, and we would all freeze thinking that this is it. There's a rainstorm coming.
In the end, we did make it out. We climbed up through a manhole just outside the northern boundary of the city, emerging at the foot of a restaurant in the street. And, you know, we surprised all these people, who were sitting and eating lunch. A waiter spilled a tray of silverware on the street as six people climbed out of the underground, you know, spattered in all forms of ejecta. And then we scouped across the street and had a - opened a bottle of Champagne to celebrate.
DAVIES: Tell us a little bit about the Paris underground. I mean, it's - there's a storied history of the catacombs. Just describe a bit for us.
HUNT: So a lot of people are familiar with the tourist track in the catacombs, where you can walk down a tunnel lined with skulls and bones. So that runs about a mile. And beyond that, there are 200 miles of catacombs beneath the city. It's just this wild, earthy honeycomb of stone tunnels that were originally dug as quarries. So all of the elegant buildings along the Seine are made from blocks of limestone that were dug out from beneath the city. So the earliest tunnels there were dug, I believe, by the Romans who were in the city when it was known as Lutece. And, you know, every subsequent people to populate the city of Paris has, you know, dug out this system wider and deeper. And today it's just this completely magical labyrinth down there.
DAVIES: You have a chapter called "The Burrowers," and you begin with the story of a guy named William Lyttle, an Englishman. Tell us about him.
HUNT: So in the 1960s, this man named William Lyttle, who lived in the London neighborhood of Hackney, decides that he wants to dig a wine cellar under his house. So he goes down into his basement with a shovel and starts digging, and he works for several hours and is able to hollow out a chamber large enough to keep wine. But then something strange happens. He can't stop. Something inside of him snaps, and he can't stop digging.
And he keeps digging and keeps digging and digs for 40 years. He spends, you know, all this time excavating a kind of hidden network of tunnels beneath his house. I think it would go down maybe 60 feet and 40 feet in either side. It was to the point where his neighbors at night could hear him kind of scratching away in the tunnels beneath their gardens.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HUNT: And then, in 2006, the street in front of his house collapsed. One of the tunnels had given way. And this sort of secret labyrinth that he had created was revealed to the public. And the city council came in and inspected and realized that the house was not livable. You know, as William Lyttle had become obsessed with digging tunnels, he had stopped keeping up his house. So everything was overgrown and falling apart.
And the city council come in, and they say, OK, you can't live in this house anymore. And they remove him to, like, a city-owned highrise. And they put him in an apartment in the highest story so as to preclude the urge to burrow.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
HUNT: (Laughter) And, you know, meanwhile he's become a kind of folk hero in the neighborhood of Hackney. Everyone knows about William Lyttle. Everyone - you know, he's in the tabloids as the Mole Man of Hackney. And he's doing interviews. And what fascinated me about William Lyttle is that he never could give an explanation for what compelled him to burrow. He would give these interviews to tabloid journalists. And they would say, like, what - you know, why are you doing this? And he would sort of shrug and say, I guess I'm just a man who likes to dig.
DAVIES: (Laughter) Will Hunt, thanks so much for speaking with us.
HUNT: Thank you, Dave.
GROSS: Will Hunt is the author of "Underground." He spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies, who is also WHYY's senior reporter.
Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel "The Falconer." And we'll listen back to my 1996 interview with Oscar and Grammy-winning French composer Michel Legrand. He died Saturday at the age of 86. Here's Legrand at the piano playing music from "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg," the part which was adapted into a hit song with English lyrics titled "Watch What Happens." He wrote all the music for the film. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're going to remember Michel Legrand, a French pianist and prolific composer of film scores and songs. He died Saturday at age 86. Over his career, which spanned six decades, Legrand won three Oscars for his music in "Yentl," "Summer Of '42" and "The Thomas Crown Affair." He also won five Grammys.
I spoke with Legrand in 1996 after the release of a restored version of the film "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg," which is one of my favorite films. It's sung through, which is to say all the dialogue is sung. Legrand composed all the music. The film was written and directed by the late Jacques Demy and first released in 1964. It made a star of the young actress, Catherine Deneuve. The film tells the story of two young lovers who are broken apart when the young man, Guy, is drafted and sent to Algeria for two years.
In this scene, the broken-hearted Genevieve, played by Deneuve, begs him not to leave her. He promises to love her for the rest of his life. This part of the score was adapted into a song with English lyrics called "I Will Wait For You" that became a hit in America.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG")
CATHERINE DENEUVE: (As Genevieve Emery, singing in French).
JOSE BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French)
DANIELLE LICARI: (As Geneviève Emery, singing in French).
BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French).
LICARI: (As Geneviève Emery, singing in French).
BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French).
GROSS: Michel Legrand, how did Jacques Demy first describe to you his idea of a movie in which all the dialogue would be sung? I'd like to know your reaction when Jacques Demy said, well, let's do it like an opera where everything is sung. Did you think, hey, what a great idea? Or did you think he was a little crazy?
MICHEL LEGRAND: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, because Jackman wasn't a crazy man. No, no, I said, (speaking French) I think it's a good idea. We should try. And then we tried. And I couldn't fight because, you know, when I started to work on it, it was very complicated, you know, classical - very modern classical music. And I said - Jacques and I, we said to ourselves, you know, it should be - if we do something like that, it should be - music should be readable and understandable. The first time, Jacques said to me it should be like a song - one song from the beginning to end, like one aria, one thing because, he said, people will have to understand it the first time they hear. You know, so I changed my mind. I changed my pencil. And I tried, and finally we came up with what you know.
GROSS: And, yeah, it's jazz and ballads.
LEGRAND: Yeah. But mostly it's melodic, you know, from beginning to end.
GROSS: Very melodic, beautiful chords also.
LEGRAND: Yeah, because, you know, we have - you know, they exist, so we will have to use them.
GROSS: What's that?
LEGRAND: The chords - I mean, you know, we have to use the chords, which are existing, so we use almost all of them.
GROSS: Now, in a lot of ways, this - in a lot of ways, "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg," to me, is like if you made an ordinary life into an MGM musical, and you took the sets of an MGM musical and combined that with the gas station on the corner - what would you get? - because it takes the scenes of ordinary life and kind of elevated to the beauty of an MGM musical. Was that what you both had in mind?
LEGRAND: No. We wanted to do a very ordinary story - the, you know, the ordinary triangle because, you know, this beautiful young girl, she does not wait for her lover to come back, and she marries someone else. At the same time, we wanted to use very ordinary, everyday language - simple, very simple. So the music had to be very melodic but exactly like one song from beginning to end, you know. And then the color will be very exaggerated. So it's a huge dream in a very ordinary life.
GROSS: Now, was the dialogue written first? Did Demy give you the dialogue and say, OK, now you can compose a score around it?
LEGRAND: Yeah, because Jacques - you know, originally had written the dialogues on every scene since - you know, since the time we wanted to shoot it as a normal movie without music, without you know, singing. And so we took scene by scene and, you know, I come up with the tempo, with the melody. And then we changed - in every scene, we changed all the dialogue. I said, Jacques, no, here - (singing) da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So he adopted everything, and then he put one syllable under every note that I was proposing to him.
GROSS: Now, I'm wondering if it was difficult for you to set the scenes that aren't the more romantic or disillusion scenes but just the more everyday scenes. Like, in the very beginning, there's a scene where Guy, you know, the romantic lead is working at the gas station, and he's just fixed a customer's car. And, you know, Guy says finished, and the customer says it rattles a bit when the motors cold, but that's normal. That's not the typical stuff that people set to music.
LEGRAND: No, absolutely not. Now, this is why - and also, you know, when we decided to to start, you know, the film with jazz, with loud, you know, blaring jazz, you know, tune to really shock the people for a few minutes and then come back to, you know, a nice and more romantic melody. We wanted to shock first.
GROSS: Why don't we hear the music from that opening scene in the gas station where Guy has just finished working on a car?
LEGRAND: Yes. And, you know, it's funny because the movie starts with (speaking French) - it's finished. So we laughed. You know, Jacques and I said, we start with it's over.
GROSS: Right. And he sang it's finished to the customer whose car had just finished. OK, here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG")
PHILIPPE DUMAT: (As garage customer, singing in French).
BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French).
DUMAT: (As garage customer, singing in French).
BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French).
JEAN CHAMPION: (As Aubin, singing in French)
BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French).
CHAMPION: (As Aubin, singing in French)
BARTEL: (As Guy Foucher, singing in French).
GROSS: That's music from the opening scene of "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg," composed by Michel Le Grand who died Saturday. We'll hear more of our 1996 interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHEL LEGRANDS' "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG THEME")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 1996 interview with pianist and composer Michel Legrand. He died Saturday at age 86. I spoke with him after the release of a restored version of the 1964 film "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg." All the dialogue is sung. He composed all the music.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
GROSS: Even though you weren't setting out to write songs, there were a couple of songs from "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg" that became very famous on their own and had a life outside of the movie. And I'm thinking from the main theme, which is known, I think, to a lot of Americans as "I Will Wait For You," and "Watch What Happens." Were you surprised that these became songs and became hits on their own?
LEGRAND: Very much surprised, I'll tell you, because, first of all, Jacques and I, we couldn't find any producer in Paris who would put one franc in an adventure like that. Nobody believed in it. We went. We auditioned, you know, to every possible producer in Paris. And nobody wanted to produce it because they said no; you're a couple of young, you know, nice guys, but I don't believe that the audience will stay for 90 minutes, you know, in a dark theater while people on the - you know, on the screen are singing (singing) you give me the sword and singing...
GROSS: (Laughter).
LEGRAND: They said, no, it will never work. So hearing back-and-forth about a year because, you know, we auditioned about - for a complete year - Jacques and I, we knew that, you know, our movie, if by any miracle we could make it, would be a flop for sure.
GROSS: And of course the movie was not a flop, and neither was the music.
LEGRAND: The opening night, right away, it was a success. So we were the first one amazed about it.
GROSS: Now, I believe that none of the actors in "Umbrellas Of Cherbourg" did their own singing. I believe each actor had a singer that dubbed for him or her. Is that right?
LEGRAND: Yes, absolutely, because Jacques wanted to have the exact, you know, actor or actress for each role. And I wanted to have the best singer, male or female, for each character. But it was easy, you know, because nobody is speaking one word in that movie. So we could choose any kind of singing voice, you know.
GROSS: When you were shooting the movie...
LEGRAND: Yeah.
GROSS: ...And the actors had to lip-sync...
LEGRAND: Yeah.
GROSS: ...To the singers, was it hard for the actors...
LEGRAND: No.
GROSS: ...To get it just right...
LEGRAND: No.
GROSS: ...And to really be - 'cause so many movies where you know - where it's dubbed like that, it looks really phony.
LEGRAND: No. But, I mean, you know, we had - I was very, very careful with it because when we recorded the singers, we asked the actors to be there at the recording studio. And we said to the actors, you have to do - you have to say (singing in French); how would you say that if you had to talk? So I said, (speaking French). So we said to the singer, so you have to, you know, listen to the actor and try to sing in the speed that the actor would normally say it. So we worked very closely, you know, actors and singers together. All the actors were there when the singers were singing their parts in the studio with the orchestra. And after that, you know, we did some acetate discs. And we forced every actor and actress, you know, in the cast to work for a couple of months every day - and I was there with them almost every day - to learn very well, you know, the music, the score.
GROSS: What did it sound like when the actors, in order to be convincing, were actually singing even though you weren't recording their voices 'cause their voices were being dubbed? But they had to actually sing so that they'd look convincing. Did they sing well, or was it funny to listen to?
LEGRAND: (Laughter) It was funny to them because they don't sing well. But I said, you know, you have to sing; don't just, you know, move your lips; sing; scream even if it's out of key; I don't care, but we must see, you know, you singing and acting. So they did it very well - very well.
GROSS: I wish I could hear what that sounded like.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: I wish there was a recording of that.
LEGRAND: No, no, no. I'm glad that you never heard
GROSS: Instead, why don't we hear some more music from the original recording? This is one of the beautiful melodies from "Umbrellas Of Cherbourg" that you composed. This is - Americans will know it as "Watch What Happens" (laughter). But this was so interesting to me 'cause I knew the song first as "Watch What Happens," which...
LEGRAND: Yeah.
GROSS: ...You know, was a very kind of popular pop hit. It's such - the second time it's sung in the movie, it's a song of such longing and disillusionment and love. I mean, there's - I'll just explain. There's a diamond merchant who's fallen in love with the leading lady. And he knows that she's in love with somebody else. But he knows that she was made for him. And he goes to her mother and says this. Once I loved a woman, but she did not love me; her name was Lola; once disillusioned, I tried to forget; I left the country and went to the end of the world, but life was meaningless; then I - by chance, I met you; and the moment I saw Genevieve, I knew she was made for me. And it's sung to this melody - a beautiful melody. Why don't we hear it, and then I'll talk to you about writing it?
LEGRAND: Good.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (As character, singing in French).
GROSS: Michel Legrand, what did you think about when writing this lovely melody?
LEGRAND: You know, I thought of - this is what the film wanted at that moment. You know, for me, the quality of a melody should - even if the melody is very complicated by itself, should sound to you like it existed for thousand years already. It should sound so natural. It should float naturally like a bird singing a song. So I always try to - even if it's torn, you know, if it's complicated or sophisticated, it has to sound to you very natural. This is why I'm always looking when I write a melody in any style, you know, in any discipline. And then this is what I tried on "Cherbourg," too.
GROSS: Earlier when you were talking about how you and the director, Jacques Demy, were first conceiving of "Umbrellas Of Cherbourg," you said that one of the difficult things when you were thinking it would be a conventional musical was how do you get from the speaking parts to the singing parts. That transition on film always looks awkward.
LEGRAND: Yeah, that's true.
GROSS: People always have a hard time with that.
LEGRAND: That's true.
GROSS: Have you - what has it been like for you to do musicals where you do have to make that transition from speaking to singing, where it's not sung all the way through?
LEGRAND: We did because right after "Cherbourg" - I mean, the success of "Cherbourg" - every producer who refused to produce "Cherbourg" came to us - said, oh, great; you guys...
GROSS: (Laughter).
LEGRAND: ...Make us another "Umbrellas Of Cherbourg." And we said, no, thank you; we've done it once; it's over now; we'll do something else. And then we did a conventional or so-called conventional musical called "The Young Girls Of Rochefort" with spoken parts and singing parts. And that, I think, we achieved pretty well - you know, the transition between what's said and what's sung.
GROSS: And was it hard to make that transition between what's said and what's sung?
LEGRAND: Hard. Yes, everything is hard. But it - you know, we - you have to be extremely keen and extremely, you know, subtle to bring the music when - you know, to end suddenly and when naturally someone starts to sing - not easy.
GROSS: Michel Legrand, thank you so much for talking with us.
LEGRAND: Oh, Terry, it was a pleasure.
GROSS: My interview with Michel Legrand was recorded in 1996. He died Saturday at the age of 86. After we take a short break, Maureen Corrigan will review a new novel about a teenage girl who feels most like herself when playing basketball. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOMMASO & RAVA QUARTET'S "MONDO CANE")
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Dana Czapnik has spent most of her career on the editorial side of professional sports, including ESPN The Magazine. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that Czapnik's deep knowledge of sports served her well in writing her debut novel called "The Falconer." Here's Maureen's review.
MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: Here's a sentence of critical praise I never expected to utter. The descriptions of basketball games in this novel are riveting. The novel that's elicited this aberrant compliment is "The Falconer" by Dana Czapnik. It's a coming-of-age story set in early 1990s New York about an athletic 17-year-old girl named Lucy Adler. Lucy feels most like herself when she's playing basketball because she doesn't try to conform to the gender norms of the time. Lucy faces ostracism at school and some rough pushback from random guys on the public basketball courts where she often plays.
"The Falconer" is a crossover book. It could be classified as a YA novel. It certainly will also appeal to adult readers like me. Coming of age in the New York of the 1960s and 70s, the closest I got to playing ball was bouncing a pink Spaldeen on the sidewalk. Girls didn't play on many sports teams in those pre-Title IX days, which maybe accounts for why I'm not much of a sports fan now. But Lucy's sweaty, all-in passion for basketball, which Czapnik captures so vividly in "The Falconer" gives me a sharp sense of what I missed out on. Lucy's Jewish and Italian family is middle-class and lives on the Upper West Side when that would've still been possible.
Her best friend from childhood is a handsome rich boy named Percy Abney. He's also a really good basketball player, which adds to his popularity even as it makes Lucy, who's seen as too tall and too fierce, a freak. Basketball is their chief bond. Although Lucy nurses a serious crush on Percy, as she tells us in the midst of playing one-on-one against him, colliding collar bones into shoulders, contact like this is what I live for. One night, though, after going to the planetarium together and smoking a lot of dope, they wind up having sex in his family's townhouse. Afterwards, Percy coolly advises Lucy not to get weird on him. Lucy is crushed. Walking home on a deserted West End Avenue afterwards, she pulls her smelly basketball warmups over her face and cries. I wanted to be his secret discovery, but I am nothing - just another stupid girl.
In the tradition of classic New York stories, Lucy does a lot of walking. And following her as she roams through vanished or now-altered New York places is another pleasure of this novel. We're taken into her cousin's crummy tenement on the Lower East Side, grab a slice with her at the corner pizzeria and tag along as she rides the subway, somewhat ironically, to her senior prom. One place that's especially important to her is The Falconer statue in Central Park. It's a real statue, much vandalized over the years, of a young boy in Shakespearean-type costume releasing a falcon into the air. Lucy tells us she loves it because it's reminiscent of the feeling when you hit the perfect jump shot.
Some breathless blurbs of "The Falconer" have likened Lucy to Holden Caulfield. But I think the more fitting comparison is to Francie Nolan, heroine of "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." Like Francie, Lucy is self-aware and glazed over with a city-girl toughness. She's distinguished not by prettiness but by determination. Nowhere does that determination blast through more powerfully than in her frequent accounts of playing basketball. Here's one from the end of the novel, where Lucy describes playing a pickup game with a bunch of guys on a public court.
(Reading) One guy dribbles the ball between his legs a few times, briefly loses composure - a life below the rim. I could steal it easy. His ball-handling's shaky. But then everyone on the court will know that I'm not some trifle. And they'll get angry that a girl just made them look like asses. And I'll get double-teamed with a heat, and my game will be done. The trick is to let the pot boil slowly, let them think you're just average or good for a girl and then slowly, slowly, slowly begin to let your true self shine. That's the only way to avoid feeling the jealous, embarrassed rage of a dude who's been beat.
There's so much more going on in "The Falconer" than just basketball. But as folks I know who love the game tell me, this seemingly speedy game slows down for good players. They can see everything happening on the court - every player, every movement, every possibility with startling clarity. In "The Falconer" Dana Czapnik displays the same gift. In bringing Lucy to life, she sees the whole game.
GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "The Falconer" by Dana Czapnik. And we want to congratulate Maureen on winning this year's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle.
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about working hard but living below the poverty line. My guest will be Stephanie Land, author of the new memoir "Maid," which chronicles how she ended up in a homeless shelter with her young daughter, fleeing an abusive relationship. She writes about cleaning houses for a living, the hurdles to getting public assistance and how she eventually put herself through college and became a writer. I hope you'll join us.
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GROSS: FRESH AIR'S executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our associate producer of digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.
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