Cecil Brown
INTERVIEW WITH TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The street Tennessee lives on in Key West-Duncan-is as
narrow as an alley. When the cab finally clumped to a stop in front of a
white conch house with a picket fence, the cabdriver said, "So, this is
where Tennessee Williams lives? Most people on the Island like him,
but I don't." The reporter asked why not. The cab driver answered that
he didn't know, he just didn't.
The gate needed a hinge so it dragged an arc like windshield
wipers make on a foggy morning. The playwright opened the door in
his bedroom slippers, his lips parting with a broad smile. Tennessee's
face is very impressive, aged with deep corrugations and a brilliant
smile that exfoliates and spreads over the entire face like a laughing
flower. His voice is sonorous, with a protracted southern accent. "Well,
you know, " he said as he led the way into the living room, "I don't
know if I have anything to say, hahaha!"
On the Dick Cavett show some months back he displayed his New
Orleans home to the public. New Orleans is his front room, but the
Florida Keys is where he works . Beside the typewriter in his study was a
copy of Rilke's
Duino Elegies,
a fan which once belonged to Hart
Crane, and a picture of D.H. Lawrence hung on the wall.
Int.:
You have a new play coming out?
Red Devil Battery Sign?
Williams:
Yes. The casting is not complete. And the financial backing
is not secure. I don't usually write expensive plays.
It
cost about
thirty thousand dollars to revive
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,
for
example. This new play will cost three hundred and fifty thousand. I
hope to have the casting and production deal closed by the middle of
February.
If
they don't have the production deal ready by then, I'm
going to publish the playas 1 have written it, and then I'm going to
leave a codicil in my will that it cannot be changed. Because when
you die, they do that sometimes. They try to rewrite your work.
