Midnight Mavericks and gathering items together for review

I've been gathering together a slew of documentaries and non-fiction writing for observation. Perhap's Barbet Schroeder's General Idi Amin Dada [A Self Portrait], Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer, The Art of Film: Vintage Hitchcock and the various supplementary documentaries thrown on every other major film's DVD release will prove ample fodder for future comments, but for now, I will focus on a book I've been reading; Midnight Mavericks: Reports From the Underground by Gene Gregorits. Of the many celebrities interviews - including John Waters, Stuart Gordon, The Kills - I mentioned to the writer that I enjoyed his interview with director Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant, King of New York). He commented that he wished that his editor didn't cut down the original piece, so I found the original piece online and here is the link:

WARNING NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT.

Interview


I'm going to try and scan the article from the book as a comparison, but for an idea of the differences the book starts with an intro about Ferrara and then the following interview bit:

Gene Gregorits: What kind of jobs did you have, before you went to film school, and made your first film?

Abel Ferrara: I worked for my father, worked for my uncles. Driving garbage trucks... I don't know, typical shit. Worked in a factory. My uncles and my father owned scrap metal yards. That was their business. Driving trucks. Washing dishes in a fuckin' old age home, anything I could get. Any job at that age is good.

More interview follows

Already a good chunk is taken out and the casual banter between the author and the subject is removed almost entirely. A certain immediacy of the original text of the interview is, in my opinion, removed. It is now an editor framing the remaining text into an new relationship for whatever reasons - space, politics, conspiracy - that shapes the book reader's interpretation.

BTW Gene is a writer who lives in the local area (this being Baltimore as of Sept 2007) and everybody should buy a copy of his book:

Buy, BUY NOW!

But don't listen to me, listen to John Waters:

Listen to Johnny!


Coming soon posts on Studs Terkel, documentary films and bio-pics! Yum-o.