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Thursday, April 12, 2007
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Just Got Out of the ITN Studio... ...in Washington, where I was interviewed about Vonnegut. I will link to the online page where the interview will be shown when I find it. Will also narrate, for those UD readers not intimately familiar with the Sudden Summons to TV Interview protocol, what this experience was like. Ne quittez pas. ******* Okay: I think this is the right place. I don't know when the interview will be available -- maybe this evening? And, as my reader Eric suggests, I'll ask my technically proficient sister to put it on youtube for me -- if I'm able to find it. As to how these odd, rushed, and deeply gratifying experiences occur: First, it's about teaching in Washington, where when news breaks you've got various media outlets here desperately seaching for a plausible person nearby to interview about it. Vonnegut - novelist - professor of English... GW's nearby... You put in a call to GW's news office, which puts in a call to the English department chair, Jeffrey Cohen, who, having just noticed a post about Vonnegut on my website, suggests UD, dear man. UD then gets a call from ITN informing her that in ten minutes a black limo will pull up to her building and drive her to their studios. UD, who had planned to make a presentation at a faculty meeting, rushes upstairs to explain things to Jeffrey, and also to thank him. She then speeds to the ladies' room. She then speeds back to her office and waits for Sunny, a nice Pakistani man with whom she will shortly exchange life stories, to call her. Her favorite part's coming up. Sunny's all done up in a fancy suit and he sprints out of the car and opens UD's door for her with intense ceremony. This whisked-into-a-limo thing is even better than the interview. Try it and you'll see what I mean. She takes a swig of water and a few nuts which Sunny has provided and gazes out at Washington on a sunny, very warm day, and thinks highly of herself. There's no particular reason for UD to think highly of herself. It's the setting. Security at ITN's building is pretty intense (CNN and NBC and other places like that are in the same building), but UD has her passport (she doesn't drive, so doesn't have a license), and this does the trick. She's given a magic piece of paper to slide through a machine in order to open a turnstile in front of the elevators. The ITN studio is small and simple. She's greeted amiably in the front room by a bunch of Brits watching four rows of tv screens on a back wall, and then she's taken into a dark, tiny room, where she's fitted out with a microphone, instructed to look at her interviewer, and we're off. I decided to take a sentimental old hippie approach to Vonnegut's death. I said that for people like me, in high school in 1969 when Slaughterhouse Five came out, it's a somewhat emotional occasion, since that novel is caught up with so many other things about that time... Well, you'll see... |