Kay Boyle Journal

(Where I put together my thoughts and experiences since I started making this film.)

I have been working on Dangerous: Kay Boyle for 28 years.  Not all the time mind you, I have had to stop to do silly things like pay the rent, have a kid, get a divorce and work on other people’s movies.  I have also made eight short films, three features and a bunch of documentaries.  I have criss-crossed the US over a dozen times  and put this film on the back burner so many times I have lost count.

The reason I am writing this journal now is because the time has come to put this film on the front burner and keep it there until I can complete it.  I have applied for grants, asked friends for money, begged friends for money, conned friends in to working with me for free as long as I picked up the tab or traveling, had credit cards taken away from me, rented equipment in foreign cities that I couldn’t pay for, and used way too much of my own funds to get as far as I have.

Making any film is a struggle, making this film makes me feel like I am the Ancient Mariner and Dangerous has become my albatross.

I have had more run ins with people and organizations that have lied to me, taken advantage of me, and used my work for their own purposes.  I am not bitter (angry is a word that comes to mind), this is what happens to any filmmaker who is so passionate about their work that they want to believe only good things about people when they are approached.  I have given away too many things and received very little in return, but I am still excited and passionate about this film.

Whenever I have had a negative experience I tell myself its okay.  “Just wait until I finish this, they’ll see.”  And I have used that to sustain me over the years.  I also know that when I have put this film away for awhile that I have allowed myself to get depressed.  “Will I ever finish this film?”  is a familiar refrain in my head.  I have friends who don’t even want to ask me about it anymore, afraid that I’ll jump all over them.  I won’t.

In my book I wrote that film school taught me you always finish what start.  Well it’s time I listen to myself and get this finished.

So follow along and see the trials and tribulations of a filmmaker who probably bit off more than he could chew in the beginning but is going to get this thing finished no matter what.  My hope is that you’ll see the mistakes I made and avoid them when you’re making your film.

I’ll see you on the road when I am touring with Dangerous: Kay Boyle.

Origins

I started researching a documentary film about American Expatriates in 1982.  I knew people who knew people who lived outside of the US for many reasons and I thought that would make an interesting doc especially since we were living under Reagan.

I was doing some research for a historical angle for the film and as I was reading different books I kept coming across the name, Kay Boyle.  I always thought I was well read but I had no idea who this woman was, so I started doing some research.  The research was amazing!

See Kay’s brief bio.

It seemed to me that Kay had been everywhere.  Here was a person who had witnessed and written about so many of the main events of the 20th Century and yet she was virtually unknown.

I was talking to a friend of mine, a poet and playwright, and told her about this woman Kay Boyle.  She said, “Oh yeah, Kay.  She lives in Springfield.  We had her up here for one of our poetry events.”  I was floored.  Kay was living 100 miles away?

Through friends I was able to get her address and a phone number.  I wrote a letter telling her who I was and that I was interested in making a documentary about American Expatriates and would she consent to an interview?  I sent the letter off and waited a week.  Then I called her phone number…

It was disconnected!  I couldn’t believe it.  I had come so close.  My biggest fear was that she had passed away.  I knew she was in her 80’s.  I was depressed.  So close.

Later that day I went by my post office box to check my mail.  There was a letter from her.  Her hand writing was very impressive, a joy to look at.

The letter stated that she had just moved back to the Bay Area (Oakland) and if I was ever down there she would love to talk to me about Paris in the 20’s and the whole expatriate thing.  I was elated!

Three weeks later I went to LA on business, driving back to Portland I called Kay and told her I was going to be in San Francisco and could I come by and meet her.  She told me she was quite busy trying to get a book review out for the New York Times but she would spare a little time, an hour.

I don’t remember much about the first time I met Kay.  I know we went out for coffee in her neighborhood and talked about lots of things.  I do remember that she wouldn’t (or didn’t) agree to participate in my film.  She wanted to think about it.

I am sure she saw this late 20’s guy she had never heard of, who was talking about making films and she had probably heard all of this before.  I don’t know what kind of an impression I made on her, but she made quite an impression on me.  It was amazing.  Here was a living link to Paris in the 1920’s.  She was very open about many things, very opinionated, and I learned in that first conversation not to bring up the name, Ernest Hemingway!  (Or, as she called him, “That Bastard.”)

I left Oakland determined to learn more about Kay and the whole expatriate movement.  It might have been that first time that she told me that she never considered herself an “expatriate”, as she was married to a Frenchman (Richard Brault) and in those days a woman had to take the last name of her husband and his nationality.  (I am not sure if that is true, but I have a copy of her passport from this time and it has the two of them on a single document.)

She did give me some information about her past and told me about a Gale research piece that she had written which was basically her biography.  I got a copy from the library.

The more I researched and found out about Kay, the more I realized that my film needed to be about her.  I wasn’t sure how she would feel about this, but I pushed forward trying to learn as much as I could about her and Paris in the twenties.

It was while I was reading her short bio in the Gale Research piece that I found out that it wasn’t just the 1920’s that was important, the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and even the seventies played a huge role in her life as well.  I started checking out her books from the library and haunting Powell’s books for copies of her work.  Every time I got a book I read it and although her books are novels I knew that they were autobiographical.

I continued to correspond with Kay, mostly by mail but sometimes by phone.  I know this sounds funny now, but in those days “call waiting” was a new thing and sometimes when I was talking to her I would get that tone that I had another call.  I never once took the other call.  I had this fear that if I did, she would feel that she wasn’t important and I could lose my chance at making the film.

I visited Oakland every chance I got and Kay and I talked.  She was funny in a way.  I could never ask her point blank questions because she would always say that she had already written about that, or there was an article about it, or whatever.  She didn’t want to hear questions; she wanted to engage in conversations.  So that was what we had.  If I wanted to talk about Paris in the 20’s I had to figure out a way to guide the conversation to that topic, usually by using something that was relevant or going on today.  It was an interesting way to talk to someone, and something I would have to use when actually interviewing her.

It took me awhile to figure out that when she talked about Sam it was Samuel Beckett, Archie was Archibald MacLeish, Bill was William Carlos Williams, and so on.  She wasn’t bragging when she talked about these folks, these were her peers.  She spoke of them like you and I might about our college friends.  It was just that her college friends became famous artists and writers.  Many times I would return home after a day or two in Oakland with a list of names and have to try and figure out who was who.  I didn’t want to ask her as I was afraid that she would think I was ignorant.  I found out later that she never thought that.

I corresponded with Kay for 2 years and visited every chance I got.  We became friends and I still remember dinners with her at The Bay Wolf restaurant in Oakland.  She joked that she was their “writer in residence”.  What that meant was that she got fantastic service and a discount on everything.  The dinners were wonderful events, sometimes with other friends of hers, sometimes just the two of us.  The conversations were amazing and many times I thought, “wouldn’t it be great to have a camera or a recorder for this”.  But ultimately I don’t think the conversations would have been as good if they were being recorded.  We were all very relaxed and that was important.

I remember the first time I finally told Kay that I had put my idea for the Expatriate Movie on hold so I could make a movie just about her.  I’ll never forget her response, “Certainly Kelley you can find a much more interesting subject than me!”

I continued to forge ahead.  The more I found out, the more I was fascinated.  I couldn’t believe that no one had approached her before.

To be continued…

I’ll post once or twice a week so check back.

Part Two.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as amazing as I thought that Kay was, she was still considered a minor writer.  I am not sure if she was taken seriously by the literary world.  Many times over the years I have read that Kay Boyle the individual was much more interesting than Kay Boyle the writer.  Why was that?

Her early works written in France in the 1920’s are amazing.  They are experimental, passionate, and I think, very personal.  At some point in the 1930’s (when the movement is considered over) I find her work becoming more political.  She was still in Europe at a time when many of the expatriates returned to the US.  War Clouds were appearing on the horizon, and Kay, along with some others, stayed.

Her work is still passionate and personal, but the political climate appears.

One of the things that I have often wondered…  Kay wrote a lot over her life for a couple different reasons.  Politics and art were very important to her but she also had to write to support herself.  That was how she lived.  She had no trust fund and she was not wealthy by any means.  She was a real working writer (and later a working mother).  She had to write to pay the bills.  Herb Wilner suggested to me in an interview that she might have been taken more seriously as a writer if she had written less.  I think this is an interesting and a good point.

I know way too many trust fund artists.  They are artists because they can afford to be.  When you don’t have to work to support yourself I think it is much easier to “dedicate yourself to your art”.  I don’t believe Kay had that comfort.

I also know many “artists” who teach to earn a living.  (I do workshops so I am not immune to this.)  Many people become academics so that they can write in the comfort of “tenure”.  Is this a bad thing?  Not necessarily.   Unless you stop writing or doing the things that got you excited about your work in the first place and opt to do things that are safer.

I can’t speak for a lot of folks, but I have noticed when I speak at colleges that there is a certain prejudice that many of the film instructors have against me.  Is it the “angry filmmaker” moniker?  Or is it that fact that I don’t teach full time, I make films.  I have worked on lots of movies and I have real world experience.  Does that intimidate them?  I can tell you there have been many instances where I have been ignored, or blown off by film teachers when I have been at various events.  Many of them don’t take the time to get to know me, and in some instances have been down right rude to me.

I make a lot of films about class issues and I do believe that many of these people are safely nestled in their cocoons and are in deed elitist.   There, I said it.  That ought to get some tongues wagging out there.  And you bastards know who you are…

I spent months doing my research on Kay.  I located every book I could find that she had written.  I used the library like crazy as I couldn’t afford to buy all of her books at the time.  I remember picking up a book at the library, Primer for Combat and looking at when it had been last checked out.  It had been almost 25 years!  This made me feel sad on a lot of levels.  Here was a book that had been sitting on this shelf for over 25 years, not being opened, nobody was interested in it.  I felt bad for Kay, I felt bad for the damn book.  I am a book fan, I love reading.  I know I am a dinosaur in that way.  The idea of a book in a library sitting for so many years…  I really took it personally.

I made a vow to myself that I was going to do everything possible to make this movie and get people to read Kay’s books again.

I would go to Powell’s Books and buy a used copy of something when I could afford it.  I was always trying to find the oldest copies by copy right.  I often hoped I would find a first edition of something that would be worth a fortune.  I don’t think any of her books are worth a fortune.

Kay had ghost written a book in Paris in the 1920.  It was a memoir of a wealthy woman who had married in to an aristocratic family (The Duyang Muda!!!!)  ****.  Kay had met her brother (Archie) and they wrote the book together.  There is a wonderful story that Kay tells about the woman who was, as she put it pretty boring so she and Archie(?) would sit around and make up witty conversations that this woman would have with all sorts of famous and wealthy people.  It is a pretty rare book as I believe there was only a single printing.

I was in Berkeley, California at a used and rare book store going through what they had and looking for lost Kay Boyle gems when I stumbled upon it!  Not only did I find a copy but inside there were a couple of folded up pages of notes in Kay’s handwriting.  She had written this note about the circumstances of her life when she had ghost written the book.  I knew the notes weren’t that old so I figured that she most know the store owner.  He wanted $75 for the book (I think) which was an awful lot for me at the time.  I was thinking about it…  Maybe the owner would give me a discount since I was making the movie about Kay.  I had to ask.

I went up front and met him.  He was a big heavy set guy with a beard and thick glasses.  I approached him and started asking about the book.  He said that yes, Kay had indeed written those notes in the book at his request.  When I told him about the movie he was blunt!  He didn’t believe that a documentary on Kay would do anything to enhance her reputation or to drive book sales.  He was adamant.  He was also kind of an asshole about the whole thing.

I declined to ask for a discount and walked out of his store not buying anything.  I would find it somewhere else.

When I asked Kay about him months later she was polite but it was obvious that she thought he was rather pompous.  I rarely heard her speak ill of anyone but if you really wanted to provoke a reaction from her all you had to do was mention Hemingway!  But more about that later…

I read everything I could find written by Kay and about her.  I was on a mission.  I spent a ton of time at the library looking through the periodical section looking for articles by and about her.  I felt a little like a detective.

When people would ask me what I was working on I would tell them about this amazing woman and everyone always had the same reaction, “How come I’ve never heard of her?”

How come no one wants to fund me…

I have had trouble over the years trying to get funding for this film from large organizations and I can’t help but wonder how much had to do with the fact hat many people have never heard of Kay or me.  I have had a couple of opportunities to bring a bigger name on to this film as it might be easier for funding purposes.  I have declined every time.  I am a stubborn guy and I think that Kay might have sensed that when she finally agreed to let me make the film.  But I am getting ahead of myself…

It was almost 2 years before Kay finally agreed to let me make a film about her.  The way she did it was different.  She called me on the phone and asked if I could come to SF in a couple weeks to attend her birthday party which was a fund raiser for Amnesty International.  She had started a group there years before and her birthday was used as a fundraising opportunity for the group.  I told her I would love to come…

First problem.  It was winter, the roads through the mountain passes to get to SF wouldn’t be in good shape and my girlfriend and I were broke.  I wasn’t sure how we were going to do this.  I had friends in the Bay Area we could stay with, now how do we get there.  In the first of many bone headed moves, I put two train tickets on my credit card and we took Amtrak to SF on the appointed weekend.

My friends in SF were going out of town for the weekend so they picked us up at the train station and we took them to the airport.  Now we had their car for the weekend.

The party was on a Saturday night at a private home.  Kay and I had already arranged to meet for breakfast the following morning.  I knew getting invited to the party meant something; I still didn’t know whether it meant that she was finally giving me permission to make the film.

At the party there were a lot of people including some of the Bay Area’s well known writers and “lefties”.  Did I mention that Kay’s politics were left?  Very left.  She had been friends with members of the Black Panthers in the 1960’s.  She was serving time in jail for her Vietnam protests when she found out that she had been approved for tenure at SF State.  That is pretty left.

Anyway, we found Kay at the party right away and she immediately wanted to introduce me to someone, (I think it was Evan Connell author of Son Of The Morning Star, about the battle of the Little Big Horn from the Native American point of view.).  She introduced me as “the man who was making a movie about her life”.  And that was how I knew that she agreed.

She introduced me to a bunch of people at the party that way.  I was really happy that she trusted me to do this.  Then I was approached by a woman who told me in no uncertain terms that she was a good friend of Kay’s and that SHE was making a movie about Kay.  She looked at me like “How dare you wander in here and have the audacity to say that you were making a movie about Kay.  I am!”  We agreed to meet later the following day and talk.

A bit later I was introduced to another woman who was “making a film about Kay”.  WTF?  Was everyone there making films about Kay?  I started to wonder, was Kay this eccentric woman who was telling everyone that they could make a movie?

I talked to this woman for a few minutes and soon found out that she had not shot anything and in fact had not even talked to Kay about it.  I told her that Kay was telling everyone that I was making the documentary about her life.  The woman wished me luck and wandered away.  I never saw or heard from her again.

The next morning Kay and I met for breakfast.  We talked about the previous evening and I told her that if she did want me to make the film, I needed to get a letter from her stating that I had her permission so that I could apply for grants and working towards getting other funding.  She said she would do that.  Then I asked her about the other woman who was making the film.

Kay seemed shocked!  She had no idea that Carolyn was making a film about her.  Carolyn had never said anything about it.  As far as Kay was concerned, I was making the film and I was the only one who had her permission.  I finally breathed a sigh of relief.  It was to be short lived.

Kay started telling me that she was going to be going to Bowling Green, OH soon to be the writer in residence for a few months and she really thought it would be great if I could bring my crew back there and shoot as she was receiving an Honorary Doctorate and had written quite a speech.  She thought it would be important for me to film the speech.  This event was in less than 2 months…

I knew I needed to pull this off as this would be my first step to show Kay that I had credibility and was serious.  I told her I would be there.  We would work the details out later.

With my head still spinning because of this first deadline, I met with Carolyn the following day.

Carolyn told me that she had done a lot of research, knew people that would be willing to help fund the film, but no, she hadn’t discussed it with Kay at all.  There was a pattern here that I would see over and over.

She had a good idea, let’s join forces and make the film together?  It sounded like a good idea to me at the time.  I didn’t have a lot of success raising funds and now I had a deadline.  My thinking was that I knew how to make a film and I had Kay’s permission.  Carolyn had contacts.  Joseph Kennedy once said the only time you ever go in to business with someone is if they are smarter than you, or have more money.  I thought that Joe would approve of this plan.

Carolyn suggested next time I was in town that we meet with the Film Arts Foundation as she knew people over there and they would be able to help us.  Sounded good to me.

Ii returned home for a couple weeks to do some work and start laying ground work for my trip to Bowling Green to film Kay.  Carolyn suggested I put together a proposal with a treatment and a budget.  I did and mailed it to her.  (Yes, this was back in the days when are only option was the post office.)

I returned to San Francisco and Carolyn and I met with someone at FAF.  They tore me a new asshole!  We meet for about half an hour and I was blasted for my proposal, the budget, and my experience.  How in the hell did I expect to make a movie about Kay, I didn’t know anything!  Carolyn seemed to take great pleasure in gutting me in front of Gail.  It was a horrible experience.

I suddenly realized that maybe collaborating wasn’t such a good idea.  I walked out of there totally blind sided.  It was not long after that Carolyn and I parted ways.  This was the first major lesson with this movie.  Be careful who you take on as a partner.