Lost and Found

Here's an unusual little item, a supposedly "lost" interview with Ray Bradbury. I say "lost" because it seems absurd to suggest that Bradbury - one of the most widely interviewed and media-friendly writers of his generation - could possibly have done an interview that contained anything so unique that its loss would be significant. There are whole BOOKS of interviews with Bradbury out there, and he was profiled for interview-based documentaries at least four times across his career.

Anyway, reservations about the title apart, The Lost Interview of Ray Bradbury does give us a nice glimpse of Ray and his thoughts from about twenty years ago. At this point he was in his early 70s, a time when most people would have long since retired, but not our Ray. Instead, he was writing scripts for his long-running TV series, putting together the short story collection Quicker Than The Eye, and launching his novel Green Shadows, White Whale. I think this is what they call a third act... The film ends with Ray reading his poem "Doing is Being", which alone makes it worth watching.

The Lost Interview of Ray Bradbury - twenty-year-old footage blended with stock footage and (in my view) rather unnecessary visual enhancements - is directed by Harry Hall, and can be viewed in three episodes on Vimeo:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

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Meanwhile, the Ventura County Star reports that Michael O'Kelly's documentary about Bradbury - Live Forever: the Ray Bradbury Odyssey - has been screened, and that O'Kelly is now looking for a distribution deal to get the film released to TV and/or DVD. The report recaps much of the story of the making of the film during the last three years or so of Bradbury's life, and also recaps the highlights of Bradbury's life and career. The report is here.

Ray in the Archives

Perhaps more than any other writer, Ray Bradbury attracted documentary film-makers, journalists and reporters. His processes of writing and his attitudes to life were endlessly fascinating, and we are fortunate that we have a partial record of his views and opinions captured on film at key stages of his career.

Here is one from 1969, made for Canadian television. It's from around the time that The Illustrated Man was being made - a Hollywood feature film starring Rod Steiger and Clare Bloom, and directed by Jack Smight. Bradbury had nothing to do with the making of the film, and would later be very critical of it. (I seem to recall that he accused the screenwriter of being a real estate agent. It sounds like an insult, but Bradbury's point was that the script wasn't written by a writer, but by a real estate agent who was playing at being a writer. Whether this is factually accurate I have no idea, but it's what Bradbury always said.)

Anyway, this is Bradbury at the age of 48 or 49, in the year that Apollo 11 landed on the moon. An author who has well and truly broken out of the genre ghetto he started in. An author whose works are now famous enough to be made into major movies. An author who, for nearly a decade, has been a spokesman for "science fiction" and a commentator on the space race. Enjoy:

Ray Bradbury, Illustrated - from CBC

Ripples

Ripples travel at their own speed, and those emanating in the US can take a while to cross the pond to the UK. Which is my excuse for not knowing sooner about The Ripple Effect, a literacy initiative in Richmond, Indiana. Earlier this month there was a staging of Bradbury's stage version of Fahrenheit 451, as this is one of the books Ripple Effect has chosen for its 2009 initiatives. Its website has a few useful links and articles about Bradbury, the role of dystopian fiction, and other related topics.

As a lecturer in film production, I was particularly interested in the "Visions of the Future" film competition which invites people to make their own utopian or dystopian film.

There is another competition inspired by F451 in Bradbury's home town: Waukegan Public Libraries is running its 25th Annual Ray Bradbury Contest. Previously a writing contest, this year the competition embraces mutlimedia submissions. Full details available here.

Speaking of F451, Kevin Cowherd of the Baltimore Sun suggests F451 as ideal winter reading. All those flames you see, guaranteed to melt away the snow and ice. Read his amusing and well informed article here.

And don't forget that the National Endowment for the Arts' "The Big Read" programme has a wealth of F451 resources, including a twenty-minute radio show about the book. The site also now features two versions of a superb film profiling Bradbury, directed by Lawrence Bridges. I first saw the short version previewed at the Eaton Conference in May 2008 - in this version Ray comes across as energetic, passionate, humorous. The longer version (approximately twenty minutes) gives a more detailed biography of Bradbury, but still entirely in Bradbury's own words. Bradbury's advancing age and declining health have sometimes diminished his persuasiveness as a speaker, but both versions of this film manage to restore him to his peak. I can't help thinking that Mr B must have been exhausted when the interviews were over. Direct access to the two versions of the film is here.

Nothing to do with F451, but relevant to the idea of "visions of the future": What does Ray Bradbury Theatre have in common with Blade Runner and Pushing Daisies? The answer is the Bradbury Building, an architectural icon which has found a remarkable life for itself in science fiction and fantasy film and television. Here is a superb illustrated article that catalogues all the major appearances of the building which, incidentally, is NOT named after Ray Bradbury.

The Story of a Writer

One of the most frequently asked questions on the official Ray Bradbury Message Board is about a strange short film from the early 1960s in which a telephone line gains a life of its own. People who enquire about the story usually have a dim memory of this being a black and white film (and often report that the film scared the life out of them when they were little).

The mysterious film is actually a film-within-a-film. It is a dramatisation of "Dial Double Zero", and features in a short documentary about Ray Bradbury, The Story of a Writer. Produced by David L. Wolper and directed by Terry Sanders, the documentary shows Bradbury's approach to writing. We see him at his typewriter, giving a lecture, researching, cycling around the Venice, California canals, and reading his story to a writers' group.

For many years, this film was hard to get hold of. Then it was released on VHS and DVD by the American Film Foundation. And now, it's available to view and download - for free - from Archive.org.

Bradbury 13 news? And a Bradbury documentary.

A company called Strategicom have contacted me, saying that they are working with Mike McDonough on licensing of Bradbury 13. It sounds as if moves are afoot - finally - to get this classic piece of radio drama officially re-released.

As I have blogged previously, Bradbury 13 (most of it, anyway) was once released on cassette, but a CD or official download version has never appeared. I hope this is now about to happen. Watch this space!


Meanwhile, I spotted a new Bradbury documentary DVD on Amazon. Ray Bradbury: Dancing Among the Muses sounds, from a customer review, a rather cheap affair. However, the producers' web page for the DVD makes it seem rather more professional. They have a trailer online (which friend Nard also found on YouTube), which includes Ray telling the familiar Mr Electrico tale. This might be worth further investigation...