THE SOFT INTERVIEW - IN THE STRANGEST LOCATIONS
I WAS NEVER A TRADITIONAL REPORTER WHEN CONDUCTING INTERVIEWS, AND THEY WERE ALWAYS A LOT MORE ANIMATED AND HONEST AS A RESULT
I've held informal interviews for stories, in crowded pubs, diners, restaurants, on buses, planes, cars, and in dark hotel alcoves, where the smell of stale beer made me nauseous, and the beat of the music used by the strippers on stage, nearby, was like a sledge hammer on the walls dividing us from the big show. I've had interviews on my front deck overlooking the wetland of The Bog, and I've walked through the trails of Algonquin Park, chatting about the life and tragic death of Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson. I don't care where an interview is held, when I'm the writer, it will be by my rules; and it will involve a casual, non intrusive discussion. If the subject wants to open up, I'm all ears and, well, no notepad. It's not how I work. I'm not a hard news reporter any more, and I'm glad of that fact.
I'm still buzzed, and in all the right ways and directions, inspired by my recent, albeit short meeting with actor James Carroll, this past weekend, in Huntsville, where he was the guest of honor at a special event, entitled "A Stage Door Thingy", put on by his friends, associates, and several of the actors he worked with on the television series, "Wind At My Back". I only got to meet James for a few minutes at the end of the show, in the lobby of the Algonquin Theatre, but we crammed a lot into a few sentences spoken to one another. He was as gentle and kindly a man as I supposed, knowing him mostly to that point, by stories my musician sons had told me, garnered from a recent personal concert at Huntsville's Hunter's Bay Radio Station, in which James Carroll was hosting the on-air component. And of course, from episodes of "Wind At My Back," where his character is pretty much the same charitable, affectionate type, as is the actuality of the man, in person. It was a tremendous privilege to be in the audience, on Saturday afternoon, at the Algonquin Theatre, for this event, to help raise funds to offset the high medical expenses, for his ongoing cancer treatments. I told him that we were going to get together real soon, to talk more, because he's got a wealth of experience and knowledge about the creative arts, and frankly, I want to know more. It's just the way I am. I know a good story when in its midst, and I have a feeling he's a proficient spinner of interesting tales. I don't know many movie and television celebrities, so I'm a tad smitten by his long list of accomplishments. I hope to have a lot more about James Carroll in the future, as Suzanne and I are currently watching all the episodes of "Wind At My Back," at present, thanks to kind folks in Huntsville, who hunted and found a box set for us via Amazon.
Canadian author, Wayland Drew, the man who penned one of the country's most memorable texts, "Superior, The Haunted Shore," amongst dozens of other high quality, well composed published works, always suspected I was interviewing him, but there was no detectable format, no visible notepad, no recording device, and I never once whipped out a camera to snap his picture. He knew I worked for the local weekly newspaper, and that I was a fairly well read columnist, so it's not like he didn't know I was making copious notes in my mind, about all the meetings we had, when we were both founding directors of the Bracebridge Historical Society, in the late 1970's, and both in on the opening of Woodchester Villa and Museum. We had a great repoire, and while working on heritage matters, we got a chance to talk casually about writing and authors we both knew, and projects he was working on at the time. He was incredibly modest about his accomplishments, and almost shy, when I'd suddenly compliment one of his books, such as being my favorite; this was "Brown's Weir," which he co-produced with his wife Gwen, also a key member of the Historical Society, and the restoration of the Victorian era, octagonal estate known as the "Bird House," named after its builder and woollen mill founder, Henry Bird.
I had a huge admiration for his writing style, and his wealth of knowledge about Canadian history, and nature, which at times made me a terrible partner on projects, because I was always trying to get some snipit of information, that would give me some rare glimpse into the man's creative inner sanctum. Wayland never once treated me as a junior writer, or an apprentice, and he never wanted our relationship to change. I think he wished I would go away sometimes, when I over-stayed my welcome. But he was nice about it, and tried to conceal his yawns. He didn't want to give me an interview for the newspaper, and I didn't want to ask for one. But it didn't mean that I wasn't working on a character profile, with best intentions of course, because I knew that what this accomplished Canadian author had, that I needed, was a deep well of self confidence. There isn't a writer, or artist alive, or deceased, who didn't benefit from that same resource, of believing in oneself, when others, for whatever reason, didn't. Over years of meeting-up with Wayland and Gwen, and reading all his books, including some of his science fiction work, I got an inside glimpse that any other reporter, surface skimming, would have missed, or avoided because of the intimacy factor. I benefitted from the writer to writer intimacy, and it wasn't just as two historical-types talking about the good old days. We talked about all kinds of stuff, and I absorbed everything of those social get-togethers, because it was important then, and of critical relevance today, when I consult his work frequently, to appreciate what a fine author employed, in order to captivate an audience. I have great memories of Wayland and he became a mentor whether he wanted to sign-on or not. He taught me to challenge myself as a writer, and never, ever give up trying to upgrade skills, or rest on the laurels of accomplishment. He also advised against ever narrowing or shortening my horizon of potential projects, and he was, in this case, the visionary a young writer needed, to carry-on despite all the set-backs of a hugely competitive profession. I remember getting a compliment from Canadian author, John Robert Colombo one day, after he had read one of my ghost stories that I had been working on, with his encouragement of course. He wrote that my writing style was reminiscent of what he knew of Wayland's work; and it floored me, because he didn't know how much I respected Wayland's work, and that I even knew him as a friend. I was thrilled to get this compliment, but it didn't make me wonder if I had been shadowing so close that I was even comping his material. Gads, that would have been terrible. But, as it turns out, this wasn't the case at all.
When I worked for Muskoka Publications as both a reporter and editor, I used to conduct ten or more interviews for every issue of The Herald-Gazette. When I'd get down to writing the news or feature stories, based on those same interviews, I was most often faced with the fact I had barely enough to make three good paragraphs, let alone filling a third of a page, in a broadsheet format. There was never any personality to the stories, and they were not very interesting to read either. By studying the work of other writers, including Wayland, I gradually learned how to incorporate actuality into the interviews, which was observational more than stuffing the copy full of quotations; the interviews began to show some dynamic, to what had been flat and unremarkable. I wasn't inventing copy, or padding quotations to make the subjects appear more interesting. I began studying their physical and emotional responses to questions, and I wasn't going to miss a point of clarity, that for example, I had noticed a tear in their eye, a nervousness in demeanor, or anger in expression, related to what we were chatting about. Over the decades, I've been conducting interviews in similar fashion, and it's been the case, that my contact with subjects, as an end result, has never been adversarial. The stories don't appear much like what one would expect as the result of a reporter asking questions. I'm not intrusive, but rather, responsive to a prevailing situation, crisis or victory. A lot of my subjects will get back to me to enquire how I got so much about them, from so little personal information, and nary a note having been scribbled during our talk. I've never crossed the line with these folks, revealing off-the-record comments, and my point for including them in a story, is not to expose them, but to acknowledge their efforts in a particular area, leading to some accomplishment or other. Hammering these folks with rapid fire questions, wouldn't give me a better interview; but instead, burden what shouldn't be weighed down by unnecessary references to things most readers couldn't care less about. The human realities. Now that's what interests people, who want to know more about the subject. The only people I talk with, as a blogger, are those who have, and are having, an impact on the scene I work in today; and yes, entertainment is certainly in the top ten of my day to day areas of interest.
I've casually or "soft" interviewed amazing characters, living and working in Muskoka, on the golf links, at the same time as I'm slicing tee shots into the bush; in restaurants where I'm likely to spill my tomato juice on the white linen table cloth, at get-togethers where everyone in attendance offers their opinion, which is duly acknowledged, and many, many of the most casual and enjoyable interviews are conducted in the music studio of our Gravenhurst business, where confidentiality is always guaranteed, and privacy protected; and the blogger can be trusted to listen and learn, but never repeat for an audience. I'm a writer who would rather know the truth of stories, even the information acquired that can't ever be revealed. I'd rather be in-the-know, than ignorant about the details of life and times in our communities. Like knowing, in the darkness of an unfamiliar room, where the obstacles are situated, in order to avoid taking a tumble. I can be far more insightful when writing about local matters and regional history, knowing the obstacles that have burdened us, for long and long; and even though I can't resolve them, I can more fully appreciate why the puzzle pieces won't, and will never fit, in the common interpretation of local history for example. It becomes an important resource when you're faced with a huge shortfall of information, in what is otherwise, an important story that can't be told sensibly by known facts alone. You get a lot of insight in casual conversation, that a reporter would never get with a hard deployment of a traditional interview for publication. I never liked this when I was a reporter, because a subject would freeze-up, worried about saying too much or making a mistake with a statement soon to be published. Every reporter has to deal with this stalemate, that can kill a story before it has been written.
I like tapping into a subject's personal point of view, and often times, it would be a bad idea to print all that was told to me; and in fact, dangerous to do so for many different legal reasons. Yet I benefit on all these occasions, knowing what should be known, but just not exploiting the nitty gritty as they say. Let me tell you, the nitty gritty gives me clarity, and a lot less room to make an error in judgement; knowing where the pitfalls exist, is pretty darn important to someone writing an intimate story for public consumption. I want to know everything I can about the person I'm interviewing, and if it makes me wince, well, I've winced before by what has been revealed to me, and survived emotionally, to write the story; and not just the polite version. My subjects over the decades, appreciate how I can allude but not reveal, and expose, without reducing the story to a sensationalist front pager just to attract readership.
Les Rutledge, of Gravenhurst, was both a friend and an adversary, depending on whether we screwed up his auction sale advertisement that week or not. Les was a mountain of a man with the disposition of a rattlesnake having a bad day, unless you met him socially and that was usually away from our respective work places; the place where an auction was happening for him, and The Herald-Gazette where I worked, and the newspaper in which he advertised his upcoming sales. For whatever reason, we seemed more than a little proficient making mistakes with his ad copy. After he had exhausted the clerical staff, trying to pacify his latest objection to something we had, or had not done, he would ask to see "Mr. Currie, the fellow who does the writing around here." I had dozens upon dozens of occasions, when I was the last line of defence, with Les, and keeping his business with our publication, instead of changing to the opposition press. I knew how to calm Les down, and give him plugs in my column or offer him some auction coverage, to make up for any shortfalls otherwise. Thus, I did more stories on Les Rutledge auctions than any other business that advertised with our paper, and honestly, it was always fun profiling this unique railwayman who became an auctioneer as a retirement preoccupation. He could get wildly animated at the sales if things weren't going his way, and bidders frustrated him, just as he became at our front counter. But it all blended into the character I knew, of an outstanding auctioneer, and a fellow with a bigger heart than many of us knew. I've republished the blog I wrote about him, because it's one of my favorites, and represents the process of soft interviews, and the insightful stories garnered as a result.
THE GUY JUST WOULDN'T SHUT UP - AND THAT REALLY ANNOYED LES
Les Rutledge was a later years auctioneer. I believe he had been a railway man before this, and was known as a hard living, hard playing chap, who dearly loved and defended his family. I remember once, at a senior league fastball game, in Bracebridge, when I was a kid, sitting next to Les in the bleachers. I didn't know who he was, but by golly, was he loud and aggressive. I was sitting next to several young men, who were yelling at a number of opposition players, and specifically, one player on the Gravenhurst team. One of the player's was his son, Keith, and when the name calling continued, especially referencing the "Rutledge" name, in a most adverse fashion, Les pushed his Stetson back for a better view, huffed and puffed a little, tapped one of the spectators on the shoulder, and said something like, "The fellow you're calling a bum, happens to be my son," he said. "Why don't you go from around the backstop here, and say that to his face when he comes in off the field……I'm sure he would be willing to talk to you about it." His words were gentle, in comparison to the volume of smoke coming out of his ears, and the red sparks in his eyes, as if an inferno was engaged in his soul. "Maybe you're a better player than he is……so what are you doing sitting up here in the bleachers son?"
One of the first auctions I took Suzanne to, was here in Gravenhurst, where Les was not only well known, but revered in his circle of acquaintances. It was an outdoor sale to settle an estate, and there were some interesting antique furnishings, we wanted for our future house, still a few years away. As it usually happens to me, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I found myself beside a loud mouth wearing a ball cap off to the side of his head. If I hadn't heard a word he said, before this, I would have thought he was going to do exactly what he did to Les. He looked the part of a blurt-for-a-laugh heckler. But still, as is my tradition, I just ignored the warning signs, and it wasn't long before this total goof, started making smart-ass comments about every auction item, Les was dealing with, and even taking pot shots at some of the bidders themselves. If we could have blamed it on alcohol, possibly he could have been removed with justification. It's not that Les wasn't used to critical comments from the cheap seats, but not every time he went to sell something else. The guy was a sort of "Foster Hewitt," type, of the former "Hockey Night in Canada" broadcasts, who felt compelled to provide the play by play. On this day, Les tried to keep his focus. It was hot, and he was getting tired with the work it was taking, to get through the large quantity of sale items. Having some background with Les, and knowing some of the warning signs…..like the sound of a rattlesnake before it strikes, I told Suzanne that we were going to have to move our pile of purchases, and get away from this guy quickly. The apocalypse was imminent.
You could tell Les was annoyed. Several of the helpers that day, were trying to cool things down, and let the mouthpiece know, he was being rude to the other bidders, because of his constant interruptions. His comments were just dumb. It was obvious all he wanted to do was get a laugh from the audience. Some times he did get his moment of glory, when two or three of his cronies, in the cluster of people near the podium, laughed out loud. If he had actually been asking sensible questions, or making reasonable suggestions, instead of the verbal horseplay, that was getting real tiresome by the halfway point of the sale……I'm pretty sure Les would have preferred to let it all pass. Then it happened. All those who knew Les intimately, inhaled and held their breath, for what seemed to be an eternity. He had a look of jagged stone, that was quite frightening, even from a distance. All eyes were fixed on his movements on the platform.
This time, he stopped the bidding on an item up for auction, initially because he couldn't concentrate on the cadence any longer, because of the jerk's constant chattering. I watched him push his trademark Stetson back on his head, wipe the sweat off his forehead, stop to pull up his trousers, regain a firm grasp of the cane in his hand, and saw that first powerful, confrontational step off the small riser, that elevated him for the sale. He walked through the audience, that parted very swiftly to let him pass (these were the regulars, who had seen this before), and with cane elevated to jousting level, he approached the trouble-maker. With body language alone, he let this tool know, his outbursts would no longer be tolerated. He was almost nose to nose, and the chap was as white as his Stetson. The guy couldn't even blink, he was so scared, looking at this huge chunk of humanity, who with his cane, made what many of us believed, was a threat to cause bodily discomfort …….if he spoke just one more word during the rest of the sale. I don't remember what he said, because most of us were sure Les was going to knock him onto the ground. But he was quite tactful, and never raised the cane to striking position, and most of the crowd applauded him, when all was said and done. Les was a minor folk hero around here, because of this ingrained tough love characteristic. When he turned around to go back to the podium, to finish the sale, people were slapping him on the back. "Way to go Les…..that'll teach him." The scrawny chap was lucky that day, Les was in a relatively good mood. Me thinks he would have had an unmistakable wood grain imprinted upon his forehead, from the auctioneer's cane, had he offered one more auction critique…..when nose to nose in the scrum of bidders, moving close to catch all the impending drama about to unfold. Maybe there were some people disappointed that day, he hadn't fulfilled their fantasy, by creaming the loudmouth, then and there. But it was the Les Rutledge I knew, from many misadventures at the Herald-Gazette front desk. I can remember walking into the office one morning, and finding the clerk in tears. When I asked what was wrong, she said, "I just heard Les died yesterday." Funny thing that! Her Monday morning adversary, had expired, and she was going to miss their little over-the-counter debates, about billing rates. We were all shocked that day, because he was just one of those colorful characters you run into, who captures your attention……and not always for the best reasons. Les was always kind to Suzanne and I, as was his son Wayne, who would later take over his father's auction tradition. Wayne was a fascinating guy as well, and I'd like to share some stories of our relationship with him, in the next several blogs.
The point is, if you're going to be a court jester, go and find a location where there isn't an auction ongoing. It's just plain stupid to heckle the auctioneer, who inevitably has the authority to stop the bidding, if he so chooses, and offer no other apology than…."I'm sorry, I didn't see (or hear) your bid." Well sir, the heckler never won a single item in that day's bidding. Les had a good memory too, so there wasn't much chance he was ever going to win a bid, at any of his future auctions either. I've been at dozens and dozens of sales, where these penny-for-your-thoughts showboats, feel they have to entertain the audience, by bellowing their comedic one-liners…..which after a couple of hours, stir nothing more than angry grumbling, and threats of bodily harm. If you are genuinely interested in securing items from the auction, by placing the winning bids, then it is imperative, to mind your manners. Having a pissed-off auctioneer, pretty much guarantees that the going won't be fruitful that day. Not every auctioneer, who is heckled, tackles the perpetrator as aggressively as the good Mr. Rutledge. Many just prefer to issue a casual warning, or to pause for a gentle word with the intrusive bidder; but honestly, short of being on a hockey rink, I've never witnessed anything as powerfully informative, as the afternoon, Les Rutledge pounded down hard, off that wooden podium, to set the record straight……about what he felt was fair comment, and what he believed was insulting to his reputation as a country auctioneer. He had spunk that's for sure.
Please join me tomorrow, for a look at the work of his multi-talented son, Wayne Rutledge, a former professional hockey player, a glazier, and a hell of an auctioneer. Thanks for dropping by today for a visit. Lots more to come, if you can stand all the excitement and good humor of the "lighter side of antique hunting." See you again soon. Cheers.
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