From the Archives: Filming Football.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: NOVEMBER 14, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 111401np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: The Idol Makers
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane in for Terry Gross.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, DOCUMENTARY BY NFL FILMS)

SOUNDBITE OF FOOTBALL SCRIMMAGE

MOSS-COANE: That's the sound of a collision of football players as captured by NFL Films. They were the first to mike players and coaches, and have changed the way that sports fans have viewed and enjoyed football. The look and feel of an NFL Film is unmistakable -- reverential, larger-than-life. And its mission is clear: to glorify the sport.

In its 35 year history, NFL Films has filmed thousands of football games, boasts a sports library of more than 20 million feet of film, produced more than 3,000 TV shows and specials, and won 69 Emmys.

On August 17, the National Geographic Explorer will air their documentary on NFL Films called "The Idol Makers" on TBS.

I spoke with the president of NFL Films' Steve Sabol, son of the founder. He played football through high school and college before being hired by his father to work at the company. I asked him, when filming a game today, how big a crew he sends on the field.

STEVE SABOL, PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, NFL FILMS: The best way to explain that would be that live television usually uses between 12 and 15 cameras at a game. We use three, and everybody's -- see, now even you're surprised...

MOSS-COANE: I gave you that look.

SABOL: ... your eyebrows, yeah, that's right. We have three cameramen: a top man who's called a "tree" -- he's rooted into position, he gives you your basic top coverage; then we have a "mole," and he's a hand-held mobile cameraman that shoots a camera from the ground with a focal-length lens of 12 to 240, which is a fairly dramatic zoom, and once in a while, he's connected to a soundman; then we have a third cameraman who's called a "weasel" and it's his job to shoot everything but the action.

Now, when I was a cameraman, I was a weasel...

MOSS-COANE: Mm-hmm.

SABOL: ... and I shot the first 15 Super Bowls and I never saw a play, but -- because I was always shooting the coaches or the fans or some of the little details. So those are really the three elements -- the three types of cinematographers that we have at every game.

MOSS-COANE: And is that the hierarchy, with the weasel at the bottom?

SABOL: Well, I think that when people think of NFL Films, they think of the action shots. But being a former weasel myself, I think that -- actually the weasels are part of the story tellers. I was an art major in college and I remember studying Paul Cezanne, who once said that all art is selected detail.

And when we started NFL Films, I always felt there should be a cameraman that just has an eye for the details -- the cleat marks in the mud; the way the sun comes through the portals of a stadium; the silhouette of a coach walking against the sunlit stands.

And that was an element that I -- when I started to shoot -- that I focused on. So I think the weasel really is important, although certainly not as important as the guys that shoot the action.

MOSS-COANE: Are there certain cameramen you think that specialize in a certain kind of shot? Is there a guy that kind of has a "weasel" personality, that you know is just going to get those details and some of that background stuff?

SABOL: Well, when you think of NFL Films, you think well we're specialized in football. But within that specialization, there are specialists. There are cameramen that specialize just in shooting a telephoto lens; just shooting the trademark -- our ball spiraling slowly through the air.

A weasel is strictly an eye. A weasel doesn't have to know anything about football...

MOSS-COANE: Really.

SABOL: ... but nothing. I mean, at Super Bowls we usually have guest weasels. A couple years ago we had Haskell Wexler (ph), the Academy Award-winning director and DP for "Medium Cool," and he weaseled for us.

MOSS-COANE: What'd he get for you?

SABOL: He got a couple -- but it was a lot of out of focus, believe it or not, but he did -- as, you know, as you'd expect -- a cameraman of his talent, he came up with a few shots and angles that none of us, who were so immersed in the game, would have ever thought of.

MOSS-COANE: You say that your mission is to act as story tellers -- to tell the story of football or the story of a particular kind of a game. I think the language of football often is about doing battle. Is that what you think the story of football is? About warfare?

SABOL: Well, I think it's a very militaristic sport. And I think that's part of the popularity. I think it's -- you know, they always say that cultures can be defined by their games. When you look at the Greeks, they had the Olympics; the Romans had the Coliseum. And I think in a certain way now, that you can look at our society and compare it maybe to the Middle Ages, when whole towns were built around cathedrals and churches.

And now when you look at towns, there are these giant stadiums that in many ways, maybe a little bit of a stretch, that you could say that this is sort of religion now with these giant stadiums and the congregation gathers every Sunday to pay -- to worship at -- or certainly to be entertained or to draw some sort of emotional sustenance from the sport.

MOSS-COANE: Well why do you think, then, that football has really, then, supplanted baseball as the nation's pastime?

SABOL: Well, I think football is our -- I wouldn't say, Marty, it's our pastime. Football is our national passion. And I think that in many ways, it mirrors our culture. George Will had an interesting description of football. We were interviewing him for a show and he said that football is popular because it's just like our society: it's a series of committee meetings punctuated by moments of violence.

LAUGHTER

But I think there are things -- first of all, that you look at television and how that has shaped our culture. And if football hadn't been invented or hadn't evolved out of rugby 100 years ago, some time in the 1950s, a group of television executives after a six martini lunch would have gotten together and said: "what can we create that's going to draw viewers and that's going to be perfect to televise for the game -- for the television?"

And when you look at football -- the field is shaped like a television screen. And you compare it to baseball -- baseball's all geometry. It's very hard to cover baseball on television. But football is -- also has a sense of ebb and flow. It's like a good conversation. There's a play and then they regroup for the huddle and you have a chance to reflect on what you've seen.

Opposed to basketball or soccer, which is like one continuous monologue. You know, there's no chance to sit and reflect and talk about what happened, and also to talk about what's going to happen next.

So, football has this sort of conversational feel to it that's perfect for television.

MOSS-COANE: And time-out to run down for that second beer, too.

SABOL: Right -- or yes, or commercials, too.

MOSS-COANE: But do you think that you have, and the folks at NFL Films, have really then contributed to the development of the passion for this game?

SABOL: I think we have, but in sort of a naive and innocent way. I think when we started, it was four or five of us, and it was just at the time a bunch of young guys who loved to make movies, and who loved pro football and wanted to convey that love of the game to our audience.

Now, people look back at what we did and say "boy, what a -- you know, you guys were great marketers; you were great packagers; you were great promoters; what a great advertising arm."

But we never thought that way. And I still never think of NFL Films as promoting or advertising or marketing. We're just passionate observers of a sport that we all love. And in the beginning, we were allowed to do that. I mean, Pete Rozelle who was the commissioner, never told me or my father, I want you to do this, I want you to that.

In fact, and this shows you how prescient he was as a commissioner, he kept us separate from New York. He kept us -- we were from Philadelphia, and he let the company grow and evolve in Philadelphia. And he always told me and my father that it was good that way, because we would be able to take risks; that we would be separated from the corporate culture and the league, and that we could develop as filmmakers 'cause I always felt that it was important to be able to take the risk; to try new things.

And if you have to go through a series of committees, that never happens.

MOSS-COANE: And yet I know you're aware of some of the criticism that NFL Films provides a kind of propaganda...

SABOL: Oh, yeah.

MOSS-COANE: ... for the game, because it does glorify the game.

SABOL: Sure it does.

MOSS-COANE: There's no question about it.

SABOL: But in that respect, I go back to my background as an art major. There were certain artists that depicted things in a certain way, and if you wanted to show the horrors of war, Goya would be a good person to paint. If you wanted the glory of war, it could be Jeracol (ph) or Delacroix that would paint those paintings.

So we're sort of artists, but this is just our way of interpreting the way we feel about the sport. Now, if someone says "well, that's -- you're glorifying it," well, I love the game. And that's the way I feel about it.

MOSS-COANE: But we're not going to hear about drug scandals and other scandals when we watch something from NFL Films.

SABOL: No, you won't because you'll see that and you'll hear that on the networks, on the hard news. And we've never said that we are journalists. We are not journalists. We're story tellers. We're romanticists. That's what -- that's the way we've looked on ourselves, but we've never tried to convince anybody that we're journalists; that this is investigative reporting. It isn't. I mean, we still shoot film, which is a good reason. I mean, right there separates us from the electronic news media.

MOSS-COANE: Let's talk a little bit about your father, who founded NFL Films. And my understanding is that he was the home photographer...

SABOL: Oh, yeah.

MOSS-COANE: ... that if you were doing something, your dad was taking a picture of it.

SABOL: Well, my dad, first of all, to me -- I don't know how many sons can look at their father and say that they were his -- they were their hero, their father, the funniest person they ever met, the best man at my wedding, and my boss. But all of those things pertain to my father.

And NFL Films really began with a wedding present. My dad was an overcoat salesman in the 1950s, and when he was married as a wedding present, my grandmother gave him a little windup Bell and Howell movie camera. And everything that I did as his first and only son, there was my dad filming -- my first haircut, my first pony ride, my first birthday, my first football game.

And every football game that I played in, from the time I was in fourth grade to the time I graduated Haverford School in 1960, there was my dad on top of the chemistry building at Haverford School on Lancaster Avenue, filming me playing football.

So by the time I'd gotten -- I had been accepted at Colorado College, he'd gotten good enough at filming football that he felt that he was going to make this his profession. So, he dropped out of the overcoat business and took the money that he had saved up and started a film company.

And the first film that he did was called "To Catch a Whale," and they went out off Rhode Island. And not only did they not catch a whale, but my dad got really seasick and the salt water destroyed two of the cameras, so he figured that he was not going to go on the rain -- you know, he's not going to become a National Geographic. He said he'd go back to doing football.

And in 1961, the rights -- the film rights -- for the NFL Championship game had sold to an independent film producer for $1,500. And my dad decided that he would -- next year, he was going to get the rights no matter what. So he figured he would double the bid. He went to New York when they had the auction for the film rights. This is for the championship game.

He doubled the bid, $3,000, won the bid and Pete Rozelle, opening up my dad's bid -- usually in the past they'd make that, you know, they'd say well, this bid has been won by Ed Sabol and he's going to be doing the championship game.

But Peter Rozelle opened it up, saw the amount of money and then quickly read over my dad's resume and became a little concerned when he saw that his only experience filming football was filming his 14-year-old son. So he just said "Ed, I'd like to talk to you for a second." And then they went out to lunch. And after several drinks at "21," my dad and Pete came to an agreement that Peter would let my dad film the '62 championship game. That's when I got the phone call and that's when dad hired Bob Ryan (ph) and Art Spieler (ph) and Walter Dumbrow -- the three people in the company.

And that's how -- well, it was actually Blair Motion Pictures then. It was named after my sister. We didn't become NFL Films until three years later.

MOSS-COANE: So your dad was a good salesman, you're telling us.

SABOL: He had a tremendous entrepreneurial vision and he kept NFL films alive for the first four or five years. A lot of people think that our style came out of our first film. It didn't. It wasn't until 1966 when we did a film called "They Call It Pro Football" and we used a narrator by the name of John Facenda (ph) -- that that was the "Citizen Kane" of sports movies. That's when we made the break from what had been done in the past, to what I think has influenced all sports movie-making today.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I'll tell you what. We're going to take a short break and then we'll talk some more.

SABOL: OK.

MOSS-COANE: And our guest today is Steve Sabol and he's president of NFL Films. And National Geographic Explorer has done a documentary of NFL Films. It's called "Inside NFL Films" and it will air on August 17.

We'll be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

Our guest is Steve Sabol today, and he's president of NFL Films. Let's talk a little bit about the music, because certainly that's a very important ingredient in the making of and certainly the viewing of NFL Films -- again, to kind of heighten the drama and the experience.

What is it about that song "What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor"...

SABOL: Oh, yeah.

MOSS-COANE: I mean, I ...

SABOL: Da da da da, da da, da, da, da, da...

MOSS-COANE: Doesn't -- hasn't that appeared several times...

SABOL: That's right. Oh, that's almost...

MOSS-COANE: ... in an NFL film.

SABOL: ... our theme song. When we started in the '60s, I felt it would be very important to develop a musical style that would be unique to football. And it wasn't the John Philip Sousa oom-pah oom-pah music, but something that was movie music -- that told a story.

And as a kid, going to Blue Mountain Camp in the Poconos, every Friday night we'd have these campfires and we'd sing these songs. And one of the songs was, you know, "what do you do with a drunken sailor, da" -- but it was one of those hummable things that you'd...

MOSS-COANE: Right.

SABOL: ... hum next day when you were playing softball or you were out canoeing. You'd be going "da, da, da, da, da, da, da..."

So when we started NFL Films, that's the kind of music I wanted, but not done with just a single instrument, but with a 50- or 60-piece orchestra. So we found this composer by the name of Sam Spence (ph) and he was working in California at the time, and we hit it off great. And I would hum some of these melodies to him, sometimes over the phone...

MOSS-COANE: These camp song melodies.

SABOL: ... camp songs, and he would -- then he would come back with 50 strings and fluegelhorns and French horns and these incredible arrangements, and it also, like John Facenda, helped create a unique style or became a signature of our movies.

MOSS-COANE: So it's possible, then, to watch some NFL Films and hunt for some camp songs that have been embedded in the sound track there.

SABOL: Oh, yeah. If you went to Blue Mountain -- yeah, you know, sure. There's a lot of...

MOSS-COANE: Kind of like "Where's Waldo?" -- NFL version of that.

SABOL: But you know, when you think of how important music is in our lives -- you get married to music; you get buried to music; you go to war to music; people make love to music. So -- and I remember watching "Gone With The Wind" that was -- what -- 222 minutes long and there's like only 19 or 20 minutes in that whole movie that doesn't have music.

And football is a sport that's -- that people associate with music. And it's so important to help build the drama and tell the story.

MOSS-COANE: So is that how you work with a composer, which is literally humming in some songs over a telephone and then they go from there?

SABOL: Well, that's how we did it -- that's how we did it for the first 15 years. Now, we have two composers, full-time composers -- Tom Headen (ph) and Dave Robideaux (ph) who work right in our NFL Films and do all the composing right there on a synthesizer and then we take their outlines on a synthesizer and then it goes over to the London Symphonic Orchestra and we do it over there.

MOSS-COANE: I wonder whether, when you look at NFL Films and you've never seen a football game, whether you have -- your expectations, then, are greater than what the game actually delivers? I was reading about a story, I think it took place in Japan...

SABOL: Yeah.

MOSS-COANE: ... where Japanese...

SABOL: Right.

MOSS-COANE: ... people had seen NFL Films before they actually saw a real live football game. They were terribly disappointed and apparently booed and hissed through all the game, looking for something that looked like NFL Films.

SABOL: Well, they thought that there would be the music.

MOSS-COANE: Right.

SABOL: They thought that they would hear the coach -- the sound of the coaches. They thought -- they didn't understand what these huddles were. They didn't see that in our film. So, they started to hiss and nobody could understand. This was in 1974 when the first NFL game was played over in Tokyo. It was the Cardinals and the Chargers.

And Dan Dierdorf, who does the Monday night broadcast, was at the game and he was the one that told the story to me. He says they were hissing and we didn't understand what it was until later an interpreter explained that they had seen these films and they wanted to know where the music was and why did it take so long and why they couldn't hear the sound. And it wasn't at all what they expected.

MOSS-COANE: So they'd rather get the film version of football...

SABOL: Right.

MOSS-COANE: ... than the real thing. Well, if you have all these archives -- all these movies in your archives -- how would you say football has changed?

SABOL: Well, I think that...

MOSS-COANE: How is it different today?

SABOL: ... it's the stadiums have changed the game because -- especially the domes. They've sterilized the game. You look at a game in the Kingdome or in the Astrodome which fortunately is not going to be used anymore. And it looks like an inside of an aquarium. The players look like little freeze-dried peas. It doesn't have the sense of grandeur and the mythic quality of the passing of the seasons that you see in the open-air stadiums.

I think that's changed. I think the players have changed in a way, in that there's a sense of entitlement now among the players -- that all this, they're entitled to. Where players in the '50s and '60s, there was a sense of gratitude; that they were privileged to be part of this -- to be part of the league; to play a game like football.

Now, there's more of a sense of, like I said, well, they're owed this. There's this entitlement. So there is a difference -- a little different, I think, feeling. And that goes back to colleges, too, because the athletes today in colleges are incredibly pampered. And that's one thing that people don't realize when you go to a -- you see how a football team operates. I mean, these players are -- every hour of the day is regimented. You eat breakfast. This is when you get dressed. Now you get in your car; you go to the bus; you go to a stadium. Back from the stadium, there's a meeting.

I mean, it's almost very similar to still being in school. So there is a certain immaturity there, and a lot of the players once they get out of the game are suddenly -- they have this incredible free, undisciplined time and it's hard to make that adjustment.

MOSS-COANE: What do you make of the die-hard football fans? I had the chance to go to a Eagles game a couple of years ago and was up -- way up in the nose-bleed section where the hard-core fans are, most of them extremely drunk. It was an extraordinary show, I will say. Lots of war paint, lots of hoopla -- you know, lots of carrying on there.

SABOL: The fans have really changed.

MOSS-COANE: What's that about, do you think?

SABOL: I don't know. You know, that's an interesting thing and we've done some pieces on that. And you could see how the fans have changed. When we started in the '60s, first of all, there was no NFL properties, so people -- you didn't have all the team identification that you have now.

And people were really into the game. But as television came along, the fan became part of the spectacle himself. And that's when you started with the "Hi Mom" and the fan shots. So then the fan came to the game not only to watch the game, but the fan felt that now he is part of this. He is part of the spectacle himself. So that's where you end up with these outrageous outfits and this whole thing where the fan now becomes part of the spectacle himself, which was different in the beginning when the fan was just a spectator.

MOSS-COANE: In this documentary about NFL Films, I think one of the cameramen says that as soon as you put a camera on a fan, their IQ drops about 20 points.

SABOL: Yeah, it's true. It's -- that was a problem that began, I think, and I'd blame Monday Night Football for that because I remember being a weasel. As a cameraman, you could go up and you could shoot a player or a fan and they would never look at the camera. They'd be involved in the game.

Then, I believe it was in 1972 -- it was a Jets game -- that one of the Jets, I believe it was Don Maynard (ph), scored a touchdown and came to the sidelines and the Monday Night cameraman came over to him and couldn't get a face shot. So the director, Chet Fordy (ph), said: "tap him on the shoulder and tell him he's on camera." So the cameraman did that. Don Maynard turned around, looked at the camera, and I guess didn't know what to do, and he said "hi, mom." And that was the beginning of the "hi, mom" syndrome which fans saw, players saw.

And from then on, it was terrible for us 'cause we couldn't get a good documentary shot because fans thought we were -- tell -- they couldn't tell the difference between two cameras.

MOSS-COANE: Right. Right.

SABOL: They'd see us, and instead of cheering or a player's -- talking about the game, they'd look at us and say "hi, mom" or you know, what they do now. And those shots are worthless to us. We can't use them.

So that was one of the more -- that was one of the bigger problems we had during the '70s and the '80s. Now, like I said, fans are part of the spectacle themselves.

MOSS-COANE: Steve Sabol is president of NFL Films. On August 17, the National Geographic Explorer airs their documentary on NFL Films, called The Idol Makers on TBS.

I'm Marty Moss-Coane and this is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Marty Moss-Coane, Philadelphia
Guest: Steve Sabol
High: This month National Geographic Explorer will broadcast a behind-the-scenes documentary about NFL films, whose presentation of football has helped make the sport as popular as it is today. The show, which is called "Inside NFL Films: The Idol Makers," will air on August 17th at 7 PM on the TBS Superstation. Marty Moss-Coane talks with Steve Sabol, the president of NFL films, who also directs many of the NFL films.
Spec: Sports; Media; Television; TBS; National Geographic; Inside NFL Films: The Idol Makers
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 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: The Idol Makers
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: NOVEMBER 14, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 111402np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: The Wings of the Dove
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:27

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: "The Wings of the Dove" is the new movie based on the turn of the century novel by Henry James -- the latest film adapted from a James story. "Portrait of a Lady" came out last Christmas and "Washington Square" opened this fall.

The Wings of the Dove stars Helena Bonham-Carter as Kate. Film critic John Powers has a review.

JOHN POWERS, FRESH AIR COMMENTATOR: Back during Hollywood's E.M. Forster boom, some friends and I were trying to guess which great writers were the next to be hot. When someone mentioned Henry James, I scoffed: too arcane.

So here comes The Wings of the Dove, the third James adaptation in the last year. It's a sumptuous and psychologically gripping new movie by Ian Softley (ph), the English director best-known for "Backbeat" (ph), which was about those arcane fellows, the Beatles.

Like so many classic stories, The Wings of the Dove is about marriage and money. Helena Bonham-Carter stars as Kate Croye (ph), a guileful young beauty who lives in London with a wealthy aunt who wants to marry her off to someone rich. Kate's already in love with Merton Denture (ph), a penniless left-wing journalist played by Linus Roache (ph).

But she lacks the courage to marry someone poor. So she cooks up a conspiracy to pair Denture off with her friend Millie Thiel (ph), a lovely, good-hearted American played by Allison Elliott. Millie's a supremely rich heiress with a terminal disease, and the desire to taste of the world before she dies.

The three go off to Venice together, but Kate's plans boomerang, and by the end, Kate and Denture are never quite sure who's betraying whom, or whether they're betraying themselves.

Such complexity is pure James, and it's set up from the earliest scenes, as when Kate and Denture are in his room and talk about getting married.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE WINGS OF THE DOVE")

LINUS ROACHE, ACTOR, AS MERTON DENTURE: What if I didn't let you leave tonight? What would happen?

HELENA BONHAM-CARTER, ACTRESS, AS KATE CROYE: I'd be penniless, cast out of society, and I'd be stuck with you.

ROACHE: Good. Well, we'll open a bottle of something and in the morning, everyone will know about it.

BONHAM-CARTER: I'm not good at being impulsive.

ROACHE: Well maybe if you just fell asleep and I didn't wake you up.

BONHAM-CARTER: I won't fall asleep. One day you'll get tired of me.

ROACHE: I think it'll be the other way around.

BONHAM-CARTER: No, it won't.

POWERS: T.S. Eliot once wrote that James "had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." And if you've read The Wings of the Dove, you know it couldn't be much less cinematic. James doesn't write dramatic scenes. His sentences coil endlessly, like boa constrictors, and his characters speak dialogue that ranges from the elliptical to the cryptic.

The novel is so refined that it seems to have been spun from mist, which isn't to say that it's vaporous. On the contrary, Wings of the Dove is about big things -- sexual desire and social class; duplicity and self-deception.

Screenwriter Hussein Emeni (ph) has brilliantly stripped away the Jamesian convolution to produce a script that's lively, explicit, and emotionally dangerous; in short, thoroughly modern. He and director Softley have updated the story to 1910, which lets them bring in automobiles and an exhibition of racy paintings by Klempt (ph).

And though Henry James is somewhere twirling in his grave, they've built the film into a climactic sex scene, in which the nudity is thematically and psychologically justified.

The filmmakers may have simplified James' tale, but the characters' motivations remain as richly mysterious as the Venice where they ultimately play themselves out.

Linus Roache, who played the title role in "Priest," has the good looks of a better-read Kevin Costner and a knack for playing men of high principle and uneasy virtue. Virile and suggestible, he captures Denture's rage, bafflement, and disillusionment at being snared by Kate's scheme and by Millie's ardor for life.

As Millie, Allison Elliott is good, but a bit wan, which is as much Henry James' fault as hers. He always sentimentalized innocent young American women. He makes them too good, and Elliott gives Millie sweetness, but not depth.

Luckily, Kate Croye has more than enough depth for any two movies. Ever since she stopped playing nice girls, Helena Bonham-Carter has flowered as an actress.

As Kate, she's a vision of alluring but ambiguous beauty, a black rose -- all bountiful hair and flashing dark eyes. Bonham-Carter plays her magnificently, making us feel her seductive blend of calculation and desire; the strangely impacted passion that destroys what it wants in the very act of getting it.

Kate Croye is easily the strongest, brainiest, and most contemporary woman character I've seen this year. And it's unnerving to realize that she was created 95 years ago, by a man who even then was thought to be old-fashioned.

MOSS-COANE: John Powers is film critic for Vogue.

I'm Marty Moss-Coane, and this is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: John Powers; Marty Moss-Coane, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: John Powers reviews "The Wings of the Dove," based on the Henry James novel.
Spec: Movie Industry; The Wings of the Dove; Books; Authors; Henry James
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 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: The Wings of the Dove
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: NOVEMBER 14, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 111403np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Arundhati Roy
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:32

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane.

One of the surprise bestsellers this summer is a book written by first-time novelist Arundhati Roy. "The God of Small Things" is about an extended family in India -- twin brother and sister, their mother, uncle and great aunt.

The mother defies the so-called "love laws" by having an affair with a man who is not of her caste, an untouchable. That act of rebellion has tragic consequences for the family and provides a way for Roy to explore some powerful taboos.

But that fictional relationship has also gotten Arundhati Roy in trouble in her own country. An Indian lawyer has said that certain passages in the novel involving this illicit relationship are obscene. And he wants the book banned unless the offending chapters are removed. Roy is expected to appear in court in India sometime later this month.

Arundhati Roy joins us today on FRESH AIR. Let's listen as she reads from the beginning of her novel, set in a region called Imanem (ph).

ARUNDHATI ROY, AUTHOR, "THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS", (READING FROM TEXT OF NOVEL): "May in Imanem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crews gorge on bright mangoes in still dust-green trees. Red bananas ripen. Jack fruits burst. Dissolute blue bottles hang vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stand themselves against clear window panes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

"The nights are clear, but suffused with sloth and solemn expectation. But by early June, the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water, with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with.

"The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn moss green. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through (Unintelligible) banks and spill across the flooded roads. Boats ply in the bazaars, and small fish appear in the puddles that fill the PWD potholes on the highways."

MOSS-COANE: And that's Arundhati Roy reading from the beginning of her book "The God of Small Things."

I had to read that passage several times, just literally to take in the lush language and just to digest what it is that you were writing about. What does it take to write a beginning of a book like that? Does that include many, many rewrites to get the words right?

ROY: Actually, no. I rarely tend to rewrite my language, you know. I don't sort of scrabble around for the right adjective. It just comes.

But I think, you know, I wondered about how you set up a novel, you know, for people. And I think for me, one of the important distinctions between writers, between good writers, is that you have -- you know, you have selfish writing and you have generous writing, where a writer actually tries to communicate, to conjure up a world in which their story is set.

So to me, it was just important -- it was almost like trying to communicate it to somebody that you love; that this is, you know, this is the world I'm writing about and this is what the trees are like; and this is what it looks like when it rains; and these are the little animals that you see. And you know, once that world exists, then the story begins to reveal itself.

MOSS-COANE: How would you describe what your novel is about? It's a complex story. It moves forward and backward in time. It has a complex cast of characters. How would you distill that story for the audience?

ROY: Well, I have to say that that's one thing that I just can't do, because I sort of wage a one-woman war against simplification, you know. And to me, the book is the simplest way of saying what I have to say.

So for me, you know, "The God of Small Things" is really -- it isn't a story that matters, you know. It's an ancient story. It's a love story. It's a story about childhood and motherhood and intimacy and transgression.

It doesn't matter where it's set. You know, the fact that it's set in India is only because that's where I grew up and that is the territory that I know. But for me, it's a story about biology, about our biological natures.

MOSS-COANE: Well, one of the transgressions in the novel has to do with the love law. And the mother in the story, Amu (ph), falls in love, has a passionate love affair with a man of a different sect, a different caste. She's Christian; he's Hindu.

And in your own life, your parents mirrored that same part of the story. Your mother was from a different caste than your father.

ROY: Yeah, that's right. My mother, well, my mother married not -- it wasn't caste -- it was also -- she -- my mother's from Carola (ph). My father was from Bengal. And she was Christian; he was Hindu. They married, and then they were divorced when I was very young, and she came back to live in Carola.

MOSS-COANE: What was the -- what -- yeah, what was the reaction to their marriage? Had they broken the love law so to speak?

ROY: Well, the reaction to them married, you know, among the sort of educated upper class -- if you do something like that and you -- I mean, if she had remained married to him, I suppose -- there would not have been terrible consequences, you know. But when she left him, she had to because of, you know, various private reasons, she comes back into the heart of this traditional community. I mean, not into the heart, actually. She lives on the edge of this traditional community.

And she has children. And this community then does not allow them the assurances that it would allow, you know, people -- it would give people who lived within it.

So it -- in that -- in a -- so what you are is, for instance me and my brother were growing up on the edge of this community which, you know, meant leading a completely unprotected childhood with a very vulnerable mother as a protector.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I want to have you read a passage from the book, and this is actually from the very end of the book, when Amu, the mother, is making love to this man that is such a transgression. And I should add that a man in India has said that this passage in your book undermines public morality. And you're going to have to go back in a couple of weeks and face a courtroom to defend what you wrote.

But first, I want to have the audience hear your words as you read this passage.

ROY: OK.

"She unbuttoned her shirt. They stood there skin to skin, her brownness against his blackness, her softness against his hardness, her nut-brown breasts against his smooth, ebony chest.

"She smelled the river on him -- his particular (Unintelligible) smell that so disgusted Babigochema (ph). Amu put out her tongue and tasted it in the hollow of his throat, on the lobe of his ear.

"She pulled his head down towards her and kissed his mouth, a cloudy kiss, a kiss that demanded a kiss back. He kissed her back, first cautiously, then urgently.

"Slowly his arms came up behind her. He stroked her back very gently. She could feel the skin on his palms, rough, calloused, sandpaper.

"He was careful not to hurt her. She could feel how soft she felt to him. She could feel herself through him, her skin, the way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.

"She felt him shudder against her. His hands were on her haunches, pulling her hips against his to let her know how much he wanted her.

"Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it, dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other, as though they knew already that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain, as though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken. So they held back, tormented each other, gave of each other slowly.

"But that only made it worse. It only raised the stakes. It only cost them more because it smoothed the wrinkles, the fumble and rush of unfamiliar love and roused them to fever pitch.

"Behind them, the river pulsed through the darkness, shimmering like wild silk. Yellow bamboo wept."

MOSS-COANE: And that's Arundhati Roy reading from "The God of Small Things." I think that's a beautiful passage.

ROY: Thank you. Well, other people don't think so.

MOSS-COANE: I know. And I wonder, when you wrote that passage and even when you conceived of the story, if indeed you conceived of it in a conscious kind of way, whether you thought you would get yourself in trouble with the censorship laws in India. Did that cross your mind?

ROY: Well, firstly, yeah, I didn't conceive of it consciously. It's a story that revealed itself to me as I wrote. But there are no censorship laws in terms of actual, you know, laws when you write a book.

There are in cinema and television, but not in this. I have to say that, you know, I -- I'm always in trouble in India, so this was something which I didn't know it would be exactly this, but I was not surprised that something happened, you know, because India is a country where there can be no consensus on really important things, you know.

It's a country that lives in several centuries simultaneously. And I -- the way I look at it is that it is the fallout of literature. It's the cutting edge, you know. And for me, it's important to argue this case because that is my territory as much as it is the territory of whoever has filed it against me.

MOSS-COANE: But if there are no specific laws, when you go back to India and I assume have to face someone in court, what are you going to defend and on what grounds?

ROY: Well, you see the way it works is that a private citizen has -- he's a lawyer, this man -- he has filed against -- a criminal case against me in the lower court. You know, it's a district court. And when the magistrate admitted this case, it becomes like the State of Carola versus me.

MOSS-COANE: Right.

ROY: OK? Now, I have -- and what he's done is, he hasn't even sort of bothered to submit the book as evidence. All he did was to photocopy three pages, and say, "Isn't this obscene?" And he submits it and the magistrate admitted the case and sent a summons to me.

Now, I have appealed in the high court, and in my petition I have actually quoted from other judgments. There are liberal judgments about things like this, you know. How do you define "obscenity"? And who is the custodian of public morality?

And so I'm just hoping that the high court will quash this complaint. And if it doesn't, then I'll appeal to the supreme court.

MOSS-COANE: Let me ask you, though, and this is something I'm sure writers like yourself would have to grapple with. If it was found that there was something obscene about this last chapter, and you were asked to remove it from the novel, would you do it?

ROY: No. I would just withdraw the novel. I would not tamper with it. I mean, I would not have the choice of not removing it and continuing to have it published.

But I would not publish it with passages removed. No I would not allow somebody to tell me what I can write and what I can remove.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I'll tell you what. We're going to take a very short break and then we'll talk some more.

Our guest today on FRESH AIR is Arundhati Roy, and she's written a book. It's her first book -- a novel called "The God of Small Things."

We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

MOSS-COANE: My guest is Arundhati Roy, and her novel is called "The God of Small Things."

I understand that you ran away from home at the age of 18. Is that right?

ROY: That's right.

MOSS-COANE: What were you running from?

ROY: Well, I didn't -- it wasn't that I ran away from home. I was in the school of architecture. I was a student in Perdia (ph). And I just, you know, found that I was not willing to live my life on someone else's terms. And I just said that I would earn my own living and work my way through college. And that's what happened. That's what I did.

MOSS-COANE: Where did you go at the age of 18?

ROY: I continued to study architecture. I used to work in offices and, you know, in my spare time. And I had a boyfriend who was senior to me who was working, you know, also in an office.

We had no money and there was no, you know, it was sort of a completely anarchic existence. Then we also would try to -- you know, we were in trouble with our college because we were trying to form a student's union.

And so we actually lived in, you know, within the walls of an old ruin. There was a squatter colony. We used to live there.

MOSS-COANE: So you squatted. Did you have a tent or something that you lived under?

ROY: No, no -- it was just a little shanty hut, sort of mud walls and tin roof. It wasn't so bad. It was fun.

I mean, I've seen that the press tries to make this out to be some tragic episode, but it wasn't. It was a group of us who enjoyed ourselves enormously and were very involved with our work and, you know, to be 17 years old and have nobody to tell you what to do and how to run your life is a great privilege.

MOSS-COANE: Well, it's a great -- a very heady experience, too. Did you learn to be resourceful? Or were you already?

ROY: We were -- we had to be.

MOSS-COANE: Yes.

ROY: Yeah.

MOSS-COANE: You then wrote screenplays, even before beginning to write this novel. And I believe even acted in some films.

ROY: Ooh. That's an embarrassing part of my life.

LAUGHTER

MOSS-COANE: I assume you weren't happy with your performance, then?

ROY: No.

MOSS-COANE: No?

ROY: I was -- I never wanted to be an actress, but I actually -- my husband, I mean the man who's my husband now...

MOSS-COANE: Yes.

ROY: ... was making a film and he was casting for it and, you know, happened to see me and asked me to act in it. And I, you know, I didn't -- I didn't have any intentions of being an actress.

But I thought it was a great way to, you know, to get sort of good seats watching how a film is made. So I did it. And I hope no one ever sees those films.

MOSS-COANE: And are you going to share the name of these films with us?

ROY: No.

LAUGHTER

MOSS-COANE: (Unintelligible) look you up. Did you know, even as you were doing it, that "I can't do this. This is something I cannot do?"

ROY: Well, I, you know, I don't -- after I finished that film which I acted, and I actually wrote screenplays. And one of the reasons why I don't want to make films -- didn't want to make films anymore -- was that I just can't bear actors. You know?

MOSS-COANE: Oh really?

ROY: Their egos -- I can't deal. But I -- it was fun when we were doing small films and everyone was an amateur, you know. Then there was no problem.

MOSS-COANE: Right.

ROY: But after that, it was quite -- you know, it wasn't -- though we had more money to make the films, it was just not enjoyable, you know? But yeah, I -- there was no way that I had any -- I just had no intentions of pursuing an acting career. But I wouldn't have known that until I did it once or twice.

MOSS-COANE: This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the independence of India. Are you going to mark that day -- that celebration in any special sort of way?

ROY: See, when you fly from America to India, you lose a day. And the day that I lose will be August 15.

LAUGHTER

ROY: You know? I, you know, say that in India -- India is at the moment swarming with sort of BBC and NPR and everyone else is very excited about it, but India -- in India, you know, people feel that this is a country that's a little older than 50. So there's -- and independence came to us in such a troubled way, you know, because it also came with the partition of the country, with a million people massacred.

In living memory, you know, people have lost members of their families. In living memory, it's very hard, somehow, to not -- it's very hard to feel one thing, you know, about independence. It's a wonderful thing.

But it's also mixed with so many terrible memories. And it's something which, if you -- and if you were in India now and you opened the newspapers, you really have to sigh, you know.

So, it's so hard to feel that you're not in -- I mean, you know, one can only hope that it has to get worse before it gets better. But colonialism is a terrible thing. It does terrible things to people. And it doesn't go -- it didn't go away on the 15th of August, 1947.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I want to thank you very much for joining us today on FRESH AIR. Thank you so much.

ROY: You're welcome.

MOSS-COANE: That's novelist Arundhati Roy. Her book is "The God of Small Things."

Coming up, another new novelist.

This is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Marty Moss-Coane, Philadelphia
Guest: Arundhati Roy
High: Novelist Arundhati Roy is making her debut with "The God of Small Things" (Random House). Roy is also a screenwriter with two films to her credit and the winner of the 1989 National Award for Best Screenplay.
Spec: Culture; Lifestyle; Entertainment; Authors; Novels; Literature
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 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: Arundhati Roy
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: NOVEMBER 14, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 111404np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Pieter Dirk-Uys
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:45

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: One of South Africa's most popular interviewers is a man who dresses in drag and appears in the persona of an Afrikaner matron named Evita. Evita's interviewees are the political leaders of the new South Africa. Even Nelson Mandela has been interviewed by Evita.

Sounds improbable, doesn't it?

But Evita, in between her dishy asides, manages to evoke genuinely interesting, often moving stories from her guests -- about their years in exile or in prison; or their hopes for the new South Africa. This has helped sell the idea of democracy to resistant Afrikaners.

The character of Evita is the creation of South African satirist Peter Dirk-Uys. He spent much of the '70s, '80s, and early '90s satirizing the apartheid regime. And he's found plenty of source material in the new government.

Peter Dirk-Uys will bring Evita to America this month as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's the first American appearance of Evita's show "You ANC Nothing Yet."

Terry Gross spoke with Peter Dirk-Uys in 1995 and asked him to describe Evita.

PETER DIRK-UYS, SOUTH AFRICAN PLAYWRIGHT, SATIRIST, AND TELEVISION TALK SHOW HOST: Evita, firstly, is 10 years older than me. She's 60 this year, and I'm only 50, which is always nice to know. She is -- got brown hair. She's very -- she sometimes feels taller than I am. She sometimes feels thinner than I am. And she's got better legs than I have.

LAUGHTER

But she's very inspired by a great love in my life who is Sophia Loren, and it's not that she's like Sophia Loren, but Sophia Loren's body language and that extraordinary, eternal confidence that Sophia has physically is something I watch all the time. So, Evita has got that inner strength, physically, so she's quite imposing.

She's got quite a lot of makeup on. She's quite well made-up. She's I suppose a cross between Imelda Marcos -- who's that lady who ran hotels? -- Helmsley? The Helmsley lady? Leona Helmsley.

GROSS: Oh, Leona Helmsley, yeah.

DIRK-UYS: Yeah -- Margaret Thatcher, and Minnie Mouse. I suppose she's a combination of all the...

LAUGHTER

GROSS: That's great.

DIRK-UYS: ... strong women that have sort of been around the world, except that Evita is very much her own person. And socially, she was born an Afrikaans girl in the Orange Free State, which is one of the provinces of South Africa; very much a Calvinist background, very similar to mine.

She became the wife of a politician, meaning that she probably was stronger than he was, and eventually overpowered him in her public image. And in fact, in the old South Africa, every time I played her, and every time she said "I've just spoken to P.W. Botha," the world believed that she had.

And the point of my new show with her is that she now says "I've just spoken to Nelson Mandela" and now they believe that she has, too.

GROSS: What is Evita doing interviewing Nelson Mandela and other luminaries of the new South Africa?

DIRK-UYS: Well, in the old South Africa, I start -- she was created in 1978 as a -- in a newspaper column I was writing. And because of censorship and because of fear, people were not writing about the things that I thought were firstly very absurd, and secondly very important to hear about.

So I created this wife of a nationalist member of parliament who in the column once a month would tell the truth, and nobody stopped us. And then I started doing my one-man show, and she became a flesh and blood character with a pink hat and gloves and the handbag and all that.

And of course, when Nelson Mandela became our president, I mean as far as I was concerned, I was irrelevant. I was redundant. I would now become a gardener and work quietly in the garden and stop all this nonsense. But it seems that the new government is writing as much material for me as the old one did.

But in order to make Evita pertinent, I had to take her out of opposition, where she's useless, and get her into bed with the new government. And so, this new TV series called "Evita's Funny Galore" had her speaking to 12 of the top new politicians in South Africa.

And it was the most extraordinarily surreal experience of my life, because as you can imagine, interviewing Nelson Mandela while wearing a dress and being treated like Margaret Thatcher...

LAUGHTER

... was something that is difficult to explain.

GROSS: Now is this a non-threatening way for Afrikaners to relate to democracy through this character of Evita? They can identify with her, and she's preaching democracy. She's preaching the new South Africa.

DIRK-UYS: They can, but they're also aware that she's preaching it through the hypocrisy of the new South Africa. I mean, Evita, like so many white South Africans, is the first person to say that she'd never supported apartheid.

Everybody in South Africa was now part of the struggle, which is part of the political Alzheimer's disease that every country in trauma seems to suffer when they come out of it, like Germany in '45 and -- I mean, I still have to come to the U.S. and find anybody who voted for Ronald Reagan twice, you know.

So I think it's a universal problem. But it's not just Afrikaners. I think many other South Africans who are not Afrikaans and white -- who are Afrikaans and black -- also identify with Evita and take her as a sort of a talisman in their lives.

GROSS: Do you think that Evita can ask questions that regular journalists wouldn't ask? For instance, to Nelson Mandela, she said: "you've freed all of us. You've freed me of guilt."

DIRK-UYS: Yes, well, the Nelson interview was a very dicey one because Evita's a very bitchy creature, and I made her very one-dimensional. I did not in any way want to embarrass him. I did not want to confuse him with this campery of a man dressed as a woman. I didn't want to -- I didn't want to trip him up. I mean, I respect -- I love the man, and the man's too important a politician, A, and too precious a human being to trivialize.

So, Evita behaved herself very much. But there are definitely things that she can say that I can't say; that I...

GROSS: Like what?

DIRK-UYS: ... well, I mean, there are, first, attitudes that she has that I don't have. She is -- she still defends the National Party. She still pretends that apartheid was imported from the United Kingdom and that the Afrikaners' gave it the name. But it's that it's a British thing. She says she's a devil's advocate, and also because she doesn't exist means that everybody else can have a ball knowing that they don't exist in that moment in time.

So I give people rope and they hang themselves with a smile.

GROSS: Peter Dirk-Uys is my guest. He's a South African satirist and he hosts a very popular TV show in South Africa in which he dresses in drag as an upper-class Afrikaner matron named Evita. And in that persona, he interviews Nelson Mandela and other leaders of the new South Africa.

I understand Nelson Mandela once invited Evita to an election rally. Did Evita go?

DIRK-UYS: Yes.

GROSS: What was it like?

DIRK-UYS: Well, that was my first -- that was my first step into the new -- the new arena. I was asked to come and entertain 40,000 black -- mainly black kids and young people from the townships at a rally that Nelson was giving in the Cape. And I took Evita, wearing her traditional Afrikaner outfit. Hah! Oh, it was like doing "Fiddler on the Roof" in Nuremberg. It was the...

LAUGHTER

... most extraordinary experience, I'll tell you. I was very nervous because I didn't really know if these people knew what I was doing, because I was very much a white icon through a white media of television and theater, which was not something that all black people were interested in. And yet, the moment Evita arrived on stage, she was cheered like you would cheer somebody at a basketball game.

So I did my 15 minutes, and basically my message to the people was: the vote is secret. No matter who you vote for, nobody will know, because the big fear was that people would be punished for whoever they voted for.

And then Nelson arrived, and I was asked to remain there as Evita. I wanted to go to the loo. I need to go and have a wee. I mean, I'd been dressed as a girl for long enough. I needed to do something boyish. But they said: "no, sit, sit sit, Nelson wants to meet you. Sit."

Eventually, I ended up sitting next to Nelson, gazing at him like Nancy Reagan.

LAUGHTER

And it was wonderful. And every time he looked at Evita, he roared with laughter, and if there's any contribution I can make to the health and happiness of Nelson Mandela, is to allow him to laugh as much as he likes at Evita. If that's all I'm there for, then I've done my job.

GROSS: Would you do Evita's words for us to give our listeners a sense of the character?

DIRK-UYS, AS EVITA: "Well thank you. I'm so glad to have a chance to talk to the Americans who have done so much to inspire us. In the past, you know, I came to America in the '50s with my husband. We were sent to America by Dr. Verwoerd (ph) to study your Indian reservation system, on which we based on homelands policy.

So, I have a very soft spot for you Americans."

DIRK-UYS: So there she is.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: At the end of the show, Evita sometimes blows kisses to the audiences?

DIRK-UYS: Oh absolutely. She blows kisses to Nelson Mandela in a cell phone. She speaks to him all the time and tells him to put in his eyedrops. She says: "now remember, my dear boy, it's two eyedrops every four hours, not four every two, otherwise your eyes go blue. We don't want a black president with blue eyes."

MOSS-COANE: More from Peter Dirk-Uys in one minute. This is FRESH AIR.

Let's get back to Terry's interview with Peter Dirk-Uys.

GROSS: Have you done satires of Winnie Mandela?

DIRK-UYS: I've done her for some years. In fact, I even did her in an airport lounge when she sat next to me, and she said: "Darling, do that sketch you do about me." And let me tell you, it was very hard, except she laughed. I've never understood why she laughed, but she thought it was funny.

Yes, I do Winnie. I do Winnie.

GROSS: What are some of the things you have to say about her?

DIRK-UYS: Well, Winnie's the one who gave me the title for the new show. At one stage, she says -- she's got this fantastic Afro outfit on, and she says: "do you like my new outfit? I got it in New York when I was there raising money for the IDP (ph). The shop gave it to me free, after I took it. Oh, come now, darling, fair is fair. We watched whites bankrupt our country. Now, it's going to be our turn. Baby, you ANC nothing yet."

So she's a very sexy, dangerous lady to play with. And she is a major South African politician. So absolutely -- she's very much in my show.

GROSS: You mentioned Desmond Tutu. I understand you do a very good caricature of him.

DIRK-UYS AS BISHOP DESMOND TUTU:

LAUGHTER

"Thank you, yes, yes, you know, I said to Peter Dirk-Uys -- I said why am I not in your show?

LAUGHTER

And so he did me in his show, and I went to look at him, and you know, I said, you know, it's very good. You're very naughty, but you don't wear enough rings on your fingers."

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Did he really say that to you?

DIRK-UYS: He said that to me, and he gave me some more rings, and I've got at least 12 rings on my 10 fingers.

LAUGHTER

I love him. I love him. He's a great man.

GROSS: Now I've read that in one of your plays, during the era when a lot of your work was being censored, you made up an obscenity -- a fake word.

DIRK-UYS: Yes.

GROSS: That you used as an obscenity -- what -- and then you called, I think, the censorship board and invited them out...

DIRK-UYS: Yes.

GROSS: ... to watch your play.

DIRK-UYS: Well, that happened because one of the great things that happened to me -- I had a great father, great sense of humor; a very, very strict Calvinist, conservative man. But a man with a great sense of humor, and we -- I got him on to the censor board, right in the middle of all my trouble with the censor board.

My pa became a censor because he could see movies free. He loved the idea of seeing movies uncut and free. And he's the one who said: "these people are such idiots. Learn the law -- learn the law and trap them with their own law."

So the law says that if they have one complaint, they must come and ban. So I used to complain. I used to send them three or four different letters, with different letterheads and different pens, complaining about my work. So they could come and ban my work, and I would reproduce the letters and say I was responsible for my own censorship. And then that would give great publicity.

So sadly, I frightened them away. But then in one play, instead of using really rude words, I made up Afrikaans words to sound rude, and they banned that play. The publicity was more than money could buy. And that made the people laugh at the fear of censorship, and that was a very positively undermining of the system.

GROSS: What are the words that you made up? The fake Afrikaner swear words?

DIRK-UYS: Well, there was -- there's a word that sounds like this -- "hernutscross" (ph) -- doesn't that sound rude? "Hernutscross" -- I mean, it sounds like -- something like "a crotch that gives joy."

LAUGHTER

Which -- of course, it doesn't mean a thing, but it's "hernutscross" -- it was wonderful. And they had to look it up in their dictionary. They couldn't find it and they were very embarrassed.

GROSS: So this was like a little performance piece that you created, in a way.

DIRK-UYS: Yes, I mean you know everything was part of the whole. Everything meant that no matter even if you were -- if you knew you were breaking the law, you had to make them aware of the fact that you knew that you were breaking the law.

In some of my shows, I would have a pre-printed postcard addressed to the Minister of the Interior in which the postcard said: "I hereby find this show obscene, blasphemous, blah, blah, blah -- delete whichever word is not applicable."

And they would just post these in the thousands to the minister, and just clog his postal passages and cause unnecessary chaos, and hopefully put up the blood pressure and make people laugh at their bosses. Laughter is a great weapon. You know, people find it very hard to fight it.

MOSS-COANE: Peter Dirk-Uys' show "You ANC Nothing Yet" makes its American debut this weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Next Wave festival.

Terry Gross spoke with him in 1995.

Dateline: Terry Gross; Philadelphia; Marty Moss-Coane, Philadelphia
Guest: Pieter Dirk-Uys
High: South African playwright and satirist Pieter Dirk-Uys. He has a television talk show in South Africa. Dirk-Uys' show has unusual twist: instead of hosting his show as himself, he dresses in drag as an Afrikaner woman named Evita. His guests have included Nelson Mandela. Dirk-Uys' show is said to be "a way of making the country's leaders seem more human."
Spec: Media; Africa; South Africa; Androgyny; Pieter Dirk-Uys; Politics; Government; Television
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