how to babble on someone else's dime
5.3 miles.
Wasn't that great? I loved the bit about jumping into the blackness. So easy to say, so hard to do.
I got interviewed by a guy from Salon magazine today for an article on online journals. (Oh good, Diane, he wants to interview you because you've had a long-term site...and you go and change the whole goddamn thing. Now was that smart?)
If there's an article that results, I'll be sure to let you know, whether or not I get quoted in it.
I'm afraid I might not be, you see. I think I sounded incoherent.
Diane's personal nightmare of how the interview might have gone:
DIANE
Did I answer your question?
Silence.
REPORTER
No, I'm sorry, what you said
sounded very silly.
(pause)
And you seem to be quite a silly
person yourself. Excuse me, I have
to find someone who knows what she's
talking about.
CLICK as the phone hangs up.
DIANE
(to dial tone)
I have your number on Caller ID.
Now, Darin assured me that in all likelihood I did not sound as incoherent or as stupid as I thought I did. Of course, this is his job: he reassures me, and I massage his toes. It's a pretty good trade-off, frankly.
I told Darin I thought I sounded nonsensical because I was never sure if I was answering the question or not. Darin explained that that is the "open-ended" question technique, in which the journalist asks a question that could be answered any number of ways, and it's up to the interviewee to figure out where to take it.
Linda told me that what journalists want from an interview is a point of view. It doesn't matter what you say, just so long as you give a coherent and strong POV. (Ah yes, there's that coherence thing again.)
There is an art to giving an interview. I wonder if there is a class in how to do it.
What I did this weekend:
I watched Topkapi, and you will all be relieved to know that it is just as good as I remembered. What a fun flick. Rent it today. Overlook Melina Mercouri's impenetrable accent. Identify with Peter Ustinov's hapless schmo. Enjoy the wrestling scenes--oolala!
The great museum break-in scene was shamelessly ripped off in Mission: Impossible. It's better in Topkapi. Boycott De Palma's inability to come up with a vision of his own. This kind of "homage" (koff, koff) was acceptable in the 70s...when we didn't all have VCRs and could access the original movies ourselves, any time we felt like it.
On Sunday I discovered the Eye channel, on which CBS puts reruns and updates of 60 MInutes and 48 Hours shows, along with some other stuff.
I got a back-to-back bonus: not only did a repeat of 48 Hours focus on the hunt for serial killers, but the David Frost Interviews that followed had an interview with Anthony Hopkins. Talk about a two-fer--I almost didn't mind what redoing this site was costing me. (It doesn't take much to keep me happy, I tell you.)
Yesterday, as I was trying to finish the last tweaks to this site before putting it up, I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn. What a great flick. If it comes to a revival house in the area I'll go see it again--you can just tell how much better it would be on the big screen.
Question: has any story ever dealt with what reportedly happened to Robin & Co. after Richard the Lionhearted dies? Because, after all, John does become king at that point...and boy, is he going to be pissed.
Hopefully I have changed this page enough for
- the Netscape 3.0x users (who experienced table problems) and
- viewers with monitors that appear to be smaller than mine.
Let me know if everything's copacetic down your way.
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Send complaints to diane@spies.com