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Arthur Miller: Writer (2017)
What a real playwright
has to do is to say to the audience, in effect, "This is what you think... you're seeing in life every day," and then to turn it around and say, "This is what it really is." ( music playing ) Imagine if we knew the truth. Man: That's a very lovely thought, all right. That would be great thing. And once, sometimes, in a lifetime, a playwright can get at it, really. ( music playing ) Man: Playwright Arthur Miller has received virtually every artistic award which denotes distinction, creativity, and acclaim. Man 2: A great deal of publicity attended Arthur Miller. Dick Cavett: ...with a giant of the American theater-- Arthur Miller. ( applause ) Rebecca Miller: My father had become a national icon of the theater decades before I was born. He had lived through so many different eras, almost like different lifetimes. Man 4: Why did you refuse the invitation of President Johnson? ( reporters clamoring; overlapping speech ) Man 5: Are you a member of the Communist Party or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? Rebecca: Early on, I recognized that his public persona was so different from the man I knew, and I felt I was the only filmmaker that he would let close enough to really see what he was like. So I started doing interviews with him and his siblings, friends, taking a lot of home footage and gathering old movies and photos, over a period of about 20 years. And all that footage sat in storage for quite a long time, until I decided it should be shut away no longer. Rebecca: Have you decided on what to wear? Arthur Miller: Well, you sort of decided for me. It's what I wore all week. ( Baroque era music playing ) ( vocalizing along with music ) I got up and I sat down, and I'm just breathless. Rebecca: OK, Pop! ( power saw buzzing ) ( drill whirs ) Miller: All those goddamn angles drive you crazy. Rebecca: Dad, do you think there are any similarities between building furniture and writing plays? The way I look at it, it's... there are forces that want to break out, and forces that want to contract. And if you've got a sense of form, you can make that projectile on stage... move like a living...thing. And move people with it. If it just lies there... motionless, it means that some of the forces in it haven't been captured. Or you haven't evoked them. ( Rebecca laughs ) Did your father like to eat as much as you do? Some restaurants, they loved him, so they'd never let him pay. I went into one restaurant in those years, twenty-five years ago, sat down, had a little lunch, waiter came over to me and said-- leaned over the table and said, "Your father was a better dresser." ( laughing ) Miller: My father had arrived in New York all alone, from the middle of Poland, before his seventh birthday. Came here alone with a tag on his...coat. And his family was here. But why--I never understood why, how they could have done that. I think they must have thought there was something wrong with him. Miller: He used to say that he would always be sleeping with idiots. And I have the feeling that he may have been in some kind of an institution. Rebecca: You think that they thought there was something-- Yeah. I can't imagine them leaving him here otherwise. Rebecca: You mean in Poland? Miller: Yeah, I think he's right. Miller: He arrived in New York. His parents were too busy to pick him up at Castle Garden, and sent his next-eldest brother Abe, going on 10, to find him, get him through Immigration, and bring him home to Stanton Street and a tenement where, in two rooms, the eight of them lived and worked, sewing the great, long, many-buttoned cloaks that were the fashion then. They sent him to school for about six months. Figured he had enough. He never learned how to spell, he never learned how to figure, then he went right back into the shop. By the time he was twelve, he himself was employing two other boys to sew sleeves on coats alongside him in some basement workshop. Kermit: He went on the road, when he was about 16, as a-- selling at a wholesale level. He ended up being the support of the entire family, because he started a business in 1921 or something, the Miltex Coat Company, which turned out to be one of the largest manufacturers in this country. See, we lived in Manhattan then... on 110th Street, facing the park. It was a beautiful apartment up on the sixth floor. We had a chauffeur-driven car; the family was well fixed. It was the '20s, and I remember our mother and father going to a show every weekend and coming back Sunday morning. She would be playing the sheet music of the musicals. And we would fight about who was going to sing with her. - ( laughing ) - ( Kermit ) Or who wasn't going to sing with her. And who wasn't going to sing with her. Generally, he wasn't going to sing. I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter And make believe it came from you - Rebecca: That's nice. - ( overlapping chatter ) Bah-bah bah bah bah-bah-bah Da deedle-ee doo-doo doo-doo Dad, what does this remind you of? It reminds me of... ( Miller continues ) Miller: You know, she could read a novel in an afternoon. She was the fastest reader I have ever met in my life. Not only that, but she'd remember it for the rest of her life. Well, she was a very complicated woman, very complex. She had the energy of a dynamo. She could sing, she could play the piano... She could be quite flamboyant. She used to dance on the table New Year's Eve. She could draw, she could-- she was a helluva bridge player. - She was funny. - Very bitchy. ( laughs ) She had an attitude about most things. Rebecca: But you kept kosher when you cooked? Well, yeah. Till she started making bacon. She loved bacon. I think she tried to rule and divide the kids. See, I always considered myself the favorite. Rebecca: Who was your mother's favorite? Miller: Yeah, I think I was. I would, for example, if I didn't want to go to school, I'd start limping around. My mother immediately caught on, and she said, "You don't have to go school today, you're limping." ( chuckling ) And we'd both go to some place and have oysters. Rebecca: But your mother, you said that she saw portents in a lot of things, right? She saw signs. She saw...mysterious things in the air from time to time. She'd have feelings from people. She once sat up in bed in the middle of the night, she suddenly said, "My mother died." And indeed, at that moment, her mother had died. It was spooky. How you you think that it translated into you, though? Well, I used to think that the way that a play was not about what was spoken, but was between the spoken lines. That the world, essentially, is not what we call "real." And these arts are attempting to approach that world. And it all comes from my mother. You know, in my case, it's always coming from somewhere. She was that way. She idolized artists, pianists, writers, and so on. My father had no knowledge of any of that. Fran: And it was an arranged marriage. For a woman of her ability to be married off to a man who couldn't read or write-- I think Gussie taught him now to read, and then to sign his name. Miller: She knew she was being wasted, I think. But she respected him a lot, and that made up for a lot. Until he really crashed economically-- she got angry then. Newsman: These tremendous crowds which you see gathered outside the Stock Exchange, are due to the greatest crash in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Miller: First, the chauffer was let go and the summer bungalow was discarded, the last of her jewelry had been pawned or sold-- and then another step down: the move to Brooklyn. Not just the case of my father, but every boy I knew. I used to pal around with half a dozen guys, and all their fathers were simply blown out of the water. The whole family orbit changed. It was--it was painful. Miller: I could not avoid awareness of my mother's anger at this waning of his powers. A certain sneering contempt for him had filtered through her voice. Rebecca: So how did the way you saw your father change when he lost his money? Terrible pity for him. So much of his authority sprang from the fact that he was a very successful businessman. And he always knew what he was doing. And suddenly...nothin'. He didn't know where he was. It was absolutely not his fault, it was the Great Crash of the '29, '30, '31 period. So from that, I always, I think, contracted the idea that we're very deeply immersed in the political and economic life of the country, and of the world. And that these forces end up in the bedroom. Then they end up in the father-and-son and father-and-daughter arrangements. Younger Miller: In "Death of a Salesman," what I was interested in there was what his world and what his life had left him with, what it had done to him. Older Miller: A guy can't make a living, he loses his dignity. Loses his male force. And so you tend to make up for it by telling him he's OK anyway. Or else you turn your back on him and leave. All of which helps create integrated plays, incidentally. When you begin to look, well, it's a personality here, but what part is being played by impersonal forces? Miller: I got through high school. I'd had such a miserable record that I couldn't get into a decent university. So I went to work on a full-time basis. Rebecca: Weren't you a waiter in the Catskills? I sure was. I was the worst waiter. It was the most elegant hotel in the Catskills, and the help was given food that had rotted. So we used to steal food on the way out of the kitchen into the dining room. Somebody ordered two lamb chops, you went into the kitchen and you ordered three. Go...( slurps ) Finally I landed a helluva good job in an automobile parts warehouse. And I had an hour and a half on the subway every morning. Then I started reading what we used to call "thick books." I remember reading Dostoyevsky once, I was staring into space for weeks thinking a human being could write that. So I saved up $500, and after much pleading, the University of Michigan decided to put me on for six months. Rebecca: But when you went to college, Kermit didn't go. Miller: He was the older son, and the older son in the Jewish family, or other families, is the one with the responsibility. The younger son is just-- nobody pays much attention to him. He's just coasting along. And Kermit had that responsibility, which he took very seriously. So as time went on, he became loaded with the responsibility for the family business. I escaped, thank God. Miller: I was gunning for a Hopwood Award, which, at the University of Michigan, was the student equivalent of the Nobel. But I had two jobs and a full academic schedule, and between dishwashing three times a day and feeding three floors of mice in a genetics laboratory in the woods at the edge of town, I would fall into bed each night exhausted. I decided to remain in Ann Arbor rather than go home for the spring vacation and to use the week to write my play. Why it had to be a play, rather than a story or a novel, I've never been sure. But it was like the difference for an artist between a sculpture and a drawing-- it seemed more tangible. Younger Miller: ...that the theater has a higher mission, has had, for two or three thousand years, a civilizing impact on man, and that it remains yet, as I said, the tribune where a citizen such as myself may address quite plainly, simply, and over empty air, so to speak, his fellow citizens. Miller: Working day and night with a few hours of exhausted sleep sprinkled through the week, I finished the play in five days. It was about an industrial conflict and a father and his two sons, the most autobiographical dramatic work I would ever write. You know, the truth of the matter is that I never had an argument with my father. That was part of the problem, see, we could never come to a fruitful conflict. ( laughing ) So it took my work to do that. From the beginning, the idea of writing a play was a kind of license to say the unspeakable. I had won the Hopwood-- $250-- for one week's work. I was still accustomed to thinking like a laborer. It had taken me two years to save up the $500 to come to Michigan. From the beginning, writing meant freedom, the spreading of wings. I had never known such exhilaration. It was as though I had levitated and left the world below. Joan Copeland: When he would have come back from college, there was a change in him. He was beginning to be his own man. He was beginning to be Arthur Miller and not just one of the Millers. Newscaster: Following yesterday's unprovoked attack by the Japanese on Hawaii, the United States was at war. Newscaster 2: Adolph Hitler's mechanized forces are racing toward Paris as French resistance collapses. Miller: He went into the army. He said to himself, he said, "Kill me." Rebecca: What happened to you in the war? Well, I was drafted, and then they looked at my broken knee and they said, "We don't want you. Go get an operation." So I said, "Why don't you guys operate on me?" They said, "We don't do that operation." I said, "Why?" "It's too dangerous." ( laughter ) By that time, I was on my way as a writer, writing scripts for radio. And I was married. Rebecca: What was Mary like? She's a Catholic woman raised in the Midwest who rebelled against all of that. They were all Republicans, she was a Democrat. She was a rebel. She didn't like going to church, she stopped as soon as she could, you know, they were all devout. She moved to New York with a Jew. Coming out of Michigan, New York was her dream come true. Jane Miller: I mean, she was literary, I mean, she read everything, and she worked in publishing. And they would go to the theater a lot. They went to the theater all the time. Jane Miller: Did you get the feeling that, you know, Dad had a weak spot for being adored? Bob Miller: Mm-hmm. ( laughs ) Yeah. Yeah, and I think Mom was not somebody who did that gratuitously. She wasn't very demonstrative in her affection. Jane: And you can see in the letters to Mary that he's quite puppyish with her, he really wants her approval and he wants to please her. ( typewriter keys clacking ) Mike Wallace: I knew you, of course, a little, and I knew Mary back at Ann Arbor. You and Mary seemed an usual couple. Miller: That's part of what attracted both of us. We were mysteries to each other. She wanted the intellectual, a Jew, the artist, and I wanted...America. Man: Opening in theaters this week, "The Man Who Had All the Luck" the Broadway debut of Brooklyn's own Arthur Miller. Miller: The question behind the play is how much of our lives we make and how much are made by circumstance. It was about a young man who lives in a small town in the Middle West. He can't seem to do anything wrong. And he gradually grows to fear that his fate is building up a thundercloud which is going to strike him, and becomes quite paranoid. I guess I assumed I was not gonna be attacked or destroyed or eaten alive. So that was my first introduction to show business. I resolved after the failure of "The Man Who Had All the Luck" that I was never gonna write another play. I didn't want to be a 30-year-old would-be playwright-- there's so many other things you can do with your life. She was the one who was paying the rent, when "The Man Who Had All the Luck" closed after six performances, and Dad sat down to write "Focus" 'cause he thought, "Maybe I'm not a playwright, maybe I gotta pay the rent somehow else." She got the publisher she was working with to publish it, after he'd shopped it around to some other places. Miller: But what I did was, decide that I would write a play one more time. This time I took over two years to write it. Rebecca: Do you know what kind of role she had in the development of the writing? Bob: Yeah. She had a big part in it. I think she'd read his stuff, I know that he showed her all his stuff. And I know she was tough. I mean, I know that she, you know, she would speak her mind and speak up about it. And I think it probably served him well. Man: It's a play that comes out right after the war, and there was nothing more culturally significant or important than a great play. Miller: It was just after the war, a boom was just starting, and here I'm writing about this great war effort that we had just come through where everybody was celebrating everything. And what the play is doing is saying, "Listen, there was a lot of crookedness in this war, there's a lot of selfish people who didn't give a damn about whether we won or lost." Is that as far as your mind can see, the business? What is that, the world, the business? Don't you have a country? Don't you live in the world? Miller: Mary's mother had unknowingly triggered "All My Sons" when she gossiped about a young girl somewhere in central Ohio who had turned her father in to the FBI for having manufactured faulty aircraft parts during the war. Chris Keller: It means you knew they'd crash! - It don't mean that! - Then you thought they'd crash! I was afraid maybe-- You were afraid maybe? Miller: This kind of placid American backyard was not ordinarily associated, at least in 1947, with murder and suicide. Well, it was the son who was discovering the-- the, uh, the, uh, failing of a father, and leveling a judgment upon him which is very harsh. I know you're no worse than most men, but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father. Miller: One tall and dignified man I saw standing in the lobby crowd at the intermission, his eyes red with weeping. To his companion, who had asked what he'd thought of the play, he muttered through thin, barely moving lips, "I like it." Once I got the first inkling that others were reached by what I wrote, an assumption arose that some kind of public business was happening inside me. Your big job is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things comprehensible. In other words, I'm the guy that goes around and says, "Well, what is really goin' on here?" Miller: "All My Sons" had already shown its impact, but the director, Elia Kazan, continued rehearsing sections of it every day, driving it to ever more intensified climaxes, working it like a piece of music that had to be sustained here and hushed there. We were very close. He was a wonderful director. I think he was the best realistic director we've ever had. Joan Miller: He adored Kazan. Kazan was a little older, as well, so I think he really looked up to Kazan. They were like brothers. And I don't think Dad ever had a friend like that again-- quite like that. We had the same attitude toward the theater, which was that it was a means to expression of a worldview of one kind or another. Miller: With "A Streetcar Named Desire," Tennessee Williams had printed a license to speak at full throat, and it helped strengthen me as I turned to Willy Loman. Rebecca: When you start a play, do you start with a character? ( trails off, indistinct ) A person, a human being.... - is what I start with. - Not a story. - What? - Not a story. Not a theme, but one person. It's a mixture. It's a mix-up. It's usually a character, because I can't think in abstract terms too much. I like to get people on the stage. Rebecca: So, who was Willy based on? Willy Loman. Miller: He was based originally on an uncle of mine. He was a salesman, he was completely crazy, and he would sweep you away with these imaginary situations. He used to sit in his garage, and hanging up right over his head was this spade. And I said, "Could I borrow the spade for an hour or two?" He'd look up and he'd say, "I don't have a spade." And I couldn't dare say, "Well, there's one right over your head." But it was more than that. He had a tragic aspect to him, always, to me. In all his exaggerations, there was a striving underneath to do something wonderful, something extraordinary. Like, a bit of an artist in there. Miller: In reality, all I had was the first two lines: - Linda Loman: Willy? - Miller: "Willy?" Willy Loman: It's all right. I came back. Miller: "It's all right. I came back." Further than that, I dared not, would not, venture until I could sit in a completed studio-- four walls, two windows, a floor and a roof and a door. There's legends about the hut he built to make it. Tell me a little bit about that again. He built this special house-- Rebecca: Yes, he had it in his head, and he was already composing the first act as he built the house. Miller: When I closed in the roof, it was a miracle, as though I had mastered the rain and cooled the sun. And all the while afraid I would never be able to penetrate past those first two lines. Rebecca: Once he had it built, he sat down and he wrote it. - And he wrote the first act in one night. - Yes. Miller: I started writing one morning... Willy Loman: "Someday I'm gonna have my own business and I'll never have to leave home anymore." Miller: ...and wrote until some hour in the darkness between midnight and 4:00. Willy Loman: In the business world, the man who creates a personal interest is the man who gets ahead." Miller: When I lay down to sleep, I realized I had been weeping. My eyes still burned, and my throat was sore from talking it all out, and shouting, and laughing. By the next morning, I had done the first half. It would take some six more weeks to complete Act Two. I did not move far from the phone for two days after sending the script to Elia Kazan. By the end of the second silent day, I would have accepted his calling to tell me that it was an impenetrable, unstageable piece of wreckage. And his tone, when he finally did call, was alarmingly somber. "I've read your play." He sounded at a loss as to how to give me the bad news. "My God, it's so sad. It's a great play, Artie. I want to do it in the fall or winter." Linda Loman: I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the papers. He's not the finest character that ever was. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening. So attention must be paid-- not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention! Attention must finally be paid to such a person! Nichols: I remember seeing "Salesman," 'cause I had a girlfriend whose mother would give us theater tickets. And we didn't go to the bathroom, we didn't do anything-- we just sat, stunned. Because it seemed that was another world. That was not like going to see a play-- it was something else. Kushner: More than anything else, Willy has sacrificed his entire life to getting a future for his son, who becomes, as his mother says, a bum, you know, adrift and lost. In Willy's case, he knows, on some level, that the infidelity and the lies destroyed Biff's faith in Willy, and it sort of revealed the world as this kind of rotten, rigged game. Rebecca: And it's a very expressionist play, which is forgotten, because it's a play-- it's almost thought of as such a realistic play. It isn't. It's quite the opposite. Miller: I had known all along that this play could not be accomplished by conventional realism, and for one integral reason-- in Willy, the past was as alive as what was happening at the moment, sometimes even crashing in to completely overwhelm his mind. Rebecca: Do you remember what your original title for that was, you said? The title I thought of originally was "The Inside of His Head." Kushner: Something's going on in Willy's head that's adrift in memory, and in damaged memory, because he's not really sure where he is at any moment. What is illusionistic becomes real and what is real becomes illusionistic. Willy Loman: I have such thoughts. I have such strange thoughts. Linda Loman: Willy, dear, talk to them again. Kushner: Part of what that structure is, which Kazan really helped Arthur plunge into fully, and then Mielziner's set is-- it's a film structure, things bleed from one thing into another, it's like dissolves. But that sort of dreamlike damaged memory structure of the play is fighting with the storytelling abilities and the dramatic structural abilities of the greatest narrative-realist dramatist since Henrik Ibsen. Miller: So I thought I could do two things at the same time. Two things at the same time, meaning...? A psychological reality and a social reality at the same time, and a tragic scheme. Willy Loman: The door of your life is wide open! Biff Loman: Pop! I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you! I'm not a dime a dozen! I'm Willy Loman. You're Biff Loman! I'm a dollar an hour! I tried seven states... Miller: The way I saw tragedy-- I guess I still do-- is, there's a forward motion on the part of a character. He is in search of a value - which he is committed to... - Rebecca: Yes. ...to the point of his life. You said that you thought tragedy was more optimistic than comedy. It means an ultimate confrontation with reality... when it's really done right. And that means that the individual in the audience gets a firmer grip on what's really going on in their society at any one time. And that should strengthen them to confront their lives. Miller: There was no applause at the final curtain of the first performance. Strange things began to go on in the audience. With the curtain down, some people stood to put their coats on and then sat again. Some, especially men, were bent forward, covering their faces, and others were openly weeping. People crossed the theater to stand quietly talking with one another. It seemed forever before someone remembered to applaud, and then there was no end to it. ( cheers and applause ) Nichols: There were stories about fathers for whom they had to call a doctor in the night after they saw "Salesman," ( voice breaking ) because they cried all night. I heard that several times. Rebecca: Why, do you think? I think they felt nailed. I thought-- I think they felt, "Oh, my God, that's me." I'm not sure I understand it altogether, because the effect of that play is... is sometimes beyond my comprehension, quite frankly. All I can do is express a vision of what-- of how to touch people, of how to move them, of how to reach them. Nichols: Did he or did he not feel that he burned something out when he wrote it? I think, whoever wrote "Salesman," something would have burned out, because it's so close to the target, it's so....alive. Miller: Well, with a success like that, you get feelings of omnipotence. A little touch of it, you know? You think you can do anything. You inevitably begin to feel a kind of impact of power which is sexual, it is financial, it is everything. You begin to shift and change if you're not careful, which I wasn't. People now were talking to me differently-- women, men-- they were looking at me like an icon of some kind. Well, then I felt with my-- with my wife then that we were... It wasn't enough for me, suddenly. I thought I-- I had a feeling that we were not close, that we were not one. ( typewriter keys clacking ) ( recording of Marilyn Monroe playing ) Miller: She was witty. She was making fun of the situation as she was playing it. But that was the difference, see, people thought they could imitate her by being cute, but she was being cute and making fun of being cute at the same time. So there was that... - Rebecca: They think-- - ...other dimension, which is very difficult to do. ( no audio of Monroe ) Mike Wallace: I gather that you resisted getting involved with Marilyn. Miller: For about four or five years, sure. - Wallace: Why? - Well, I was married, and I didn't want to break up my marriage. Certainly not. Miller: Since I was married and Marilyn could hardly peek out of her hotel room door without being photographed, we spent much time alone together. A bond of shared silences as mysterious as sexuality, and as hard to break, also began to form. After one of those silences I said, "You're the saddest girl I've ever met." A smile touched her lips as she discovered the compliment I had intended. "You're the only one who ever said that to me." I certainly do believe that the Communist Party should be outlawed. If I had my way about it, they'd all be sent back to Russia. Rebecca: Dad had been radicalized by Marxism when he was in his teens, but soon came to feel that there wasn't enough room for the individual in Marxism and became a liberal and really dedicated much of his life to liberal causes. But in the 1950s, it was dangerous to be a liberal and an artist. Miller: A kind of popular fascism was developing in the United States. Seriously. As we know now, the situation with the FBI and the rest of it was far worse than anybody even imagined in those times. There were... there were spies everywhere. I found out only 25 years later, when I got my records from the FBI, that they had followed people from my house in Brooklyn. They had tailed people at a dinner party. See, the big switch was the turnaround vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, which had been our ally and suddenly was the enemy. And that left a whole sector of the American population high and dry, because these people had been pro-Soviet or they were at least pro-labor and pro-all that-- - liberal. - Rebecca: Right. And suddenly these people were regarded as traitors, treasonous. Man: The Committee on Un-American Activities is investigating communist infiltration in the motion picture industry. Man 2: Victory will be assured once communists are identified and exposed. Miller: Actors, directors-- everybody. Their careers were destroyed overnight because they wouldn't cooperate with some, you know, Indiana Republican who was hounding them. Man: Are you a member of the Communist Party, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? Lawson: It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of Americanism. - ( gavel striking ) - Man: That's not the question! Man: John Howard Lawson refused to answer the question "Are you a member of the Communist Party?" Therefore it is the unanimous opinion of this subcommittee that John Howard Lawson is in contempt of Congress. And you got the feeling once again that there was no value anywhere. You know, we were all... the subject of Big Power. Miller: A living connection between Washington and the Salem witchcraft phenomenon was made in my mind. The main point of the hearings, precisely as in 17th century Salem, was that the accused make public confession. Man: Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? - Yes or no? - I don't believe you have the right to ask that question of anybody. I felt that it would soon be too late to do anything-- that you would never get a play on or be able to say anything. I was really quite desperate. So while the theater was still running, I thought it was time to say something. Miller: I was on my way up to Salem 'cause I wanted to do some research for "The Crucible." The day before I was to leave, Kazan phoned and asked to see me. I stopped off on the way north. And that's when he told me that he was going to tell about other people he knew in the party. - ( gavel strikes ) - They made it clear to him that if he didn't do that, he could never work in films again. Rebecca: So when you saw him, how did you-- he said, "I'm doing this," and did you try to dissuade him? Well, I told him I thought it was a terrible mistake, that this thing would not last-- the Un-American Committee fever-- that if it did, it wouldn't matter, because we'd have fascism in this country. Meantime, he could work in the theater, there was no blacklist in the theater. And he said, well, he wanted to make films. So he thought he had to do this. The real villain here was not him or people like him. It was the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Joe McCarthy. Everybody lost sight of them. They'd vanish into the woodwork. And they keep blaming these people who were essentially... ( sighs ) ...victims. Miller: I left Salem in the late afternoon, and the 6:00 news came on the radio with the black night like a cloak thrown over the windshield. Man on radio: Good evening. Today in Washington... Miller: The announcer read a bulletin about Elia Kazan's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and mentioned the people he had named. Man on radio: Clifford Odets, J. Edward Bromberg... Miller: A numbness held me. Man on radio: ...Phoebe Brandt, James Proctor, Lewis Leverett, Morris Carnovsky... Miller: It was sadness-- purely mournful; deadening. As I headed downtown toward the Brooklyn Bridge, I found myself keeping to the slow side of the speedometer as though to protect what truth there was in me from skidding into oblivion. That I was committed to this play was no longer a question for me-- I had made the decision, without thinking about it, somewhere between Salem and this city. Kushner: It's about a dilemma that every society comes to at one point or another, which is when the powerful make an alliance with the mad. Reverend Parris: You are all aware of the rumors of that spirit come among us out of Hell... Miller: The fascinating thing to me, that a town of this kind could suddenly erupt in that kind of an explosive hysteria. The whole attitude of the '50s started to develop, where, on a different level, with different folkways and so on, essentially, the same phenomenon was occurring. Mr. Hawthorne! I am innocent to a witch! I know not what a witch is. If you know not what a witch is, how do you know you are not one?! Miller: The guilt of the victim was very interesting to me. You may not feel guilty for what they've charged you with, but that doesn't matter. You're charged, so you feel guilty about something else. Miller: The central image was that of a guilt-ridden man, John Proctor, who, having slept with his teenage servant girl, watches with horror as she becomes the leader of the witch-hunting pack and points her accusing finger at the wife he has himself betrayed. The noose is up. There'll be no noose. Abigail wants me dead, John. You know it. Miller: It reflected what I was going through in my marriage. - Rebecca: Guilt on your part? - On my part. And anger on whose part? My own part. Also on your part. Uh... and my wife-- my then-wife's part. Let you look for some goodness in me... and judge me not. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John, only somewhat bewildered. Oh, Elizabeth... your justice would freeze beer. Rebecca: And yet in the play, there's such a beautiful reconciliation between the wife and the husband, which in real life, there wasn't. No, there wasn't. But I didn't get hung. - ( laughs ) - That's the best way to reconcile people. You hang one of 'em, or, if necessary, both. Bob Miller: Jane went up to his studio on the top floor of the Willow Street house, I guess she came down, and then she and Mom were sort of in Jane's bedroom, which was right at the bottom of the stairs, and they were crying. Then I was gonna go out and say, "Well, I'm not-- I'm actually gonna go away for a little while." And I just remember being sort of mystified by the whole thing, him and Mom sort of hug and kiss goodbye, and Jane and I always tittered when they hugged and kissed 'cause we were little. So I remember that last time that there was a hug and a kiss and started realizing that that's probably the last time. Mike Wallace: And you have a sense of guilt about it? Miller: Terrible. It rolls all over you. Miller: During our rehearsals of "A View From the Bridge," on 42nd Street, I passed a life-sized cutout of her in the lobby every day. The famous laughing shot from "The Seven Year Itch," in a white dress with her skirt blowing up over a subway grate, whereupon I would sit for six hours as Van Heflin/Eddie Carbone struggled with a compulsion he could not nail or destroy. The best work that anybody ever writes is a work that is on the verge of embarrassing him. Always. It's inevitable. Where he puts himself on the line-- sometimes quite secretly... sometimes symbolically. Kushner: I remember when I read "View From the Bridge" in college, the way that it deals directly with sexuality and desire, it seemed like a departure, in a way, it's filled with moral dilemma, but it's also about sort of insatiable desire and sort of implacable appetite. ( typewriter keys clacking ) Miller: I guess we're all, every artist, there's a tendency to throw himself into the world and see if he floats. Miller: When she appeared, the future vanished. She seemed without expectations, and this was like freedom. To my thoughts, it was total honesty-- that's what knocked me out. She seemed utterly without guile... completely honest about herself and about anything she looked at. Whereas the society I came from was very guarded, judgmental-- we made judgments of people. She accepted that everybody was who they were and what they were. This appearance of being absolutely free was simply a disguise. She was in a way the most repressed person imaginable-- been kicked around as a child, she'd been abused as a child, she'd been deserted, abandoned. She was a very courageous human being. It was because I loved her, so I took that attitude toward her. So the best of her, she thought, was in my eye; therefore the hope she had was with me. Rebecca: What was your first notice that you got that you were going to get in trouble with the Un-American Activities Committee? Well, they never bothered me until I married Marilyn. And then they-- they were already on a downslope. People were getting bored with them, so they saw a terrific chance for a lot of good publicity. Monroe: I would like to say that I'm truly confident that, in the end, my husband will win this case. ( laughing ) We are a country of entertainers. You gotta be entertaining. Even the fascists have to be entertaining. Man: ...truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Miller: They were replaying "The Crucible." Man: Are you a member of the Communist Party? Miller: I'd said that I had attended meetings of communist writers, and they said, "Well, was so-and-so in the room?" And so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so in the room. And I had to say, "I'm not gonna talk about anybody else." Miller: I don't believe, and I never did, that a man has to become an informer in order to practice his profession freely in the United States. Now the important question, Mr. Miller: Where's Marilyn? She's waiting for me at home. Miller: When I got to Washington, the head of the committee offered to call off the whole hearing if Marilyn would take a photograph with him. Rebecca: Oh, my God. Miller: And I said they'd better have the hearing. A few months later we had to go through a trial in federal court, and I was found guilty of contempt. So I was fined $500 and sentenced to a year in jail that was suspended. The whole thing was simply beyond description. Reporter: How do you think of this whole ruckus, Miss Monroe? Miss Monroe. Bob: It was dreadful. I mean, you couldn't go down to buy a newspaper. We couldn't just walk down and get an ice cream. We couldn't do that. I mean, the simplest things. Miller: If you're with somebody who's that celebrated in the world, it distorts a lot of reality. And so that was a difficulty to get over. And I never quite made it, I admit. Reporter: Mr. Miller, would you make some kind of comment for us? ( all clamoring ) Reporter 2: Will you be writing from here on in? Yes, exactly. What'll you be working on, exactly? You produced very little during your years with her. - That's right. - Why? I guess, to be frank about it, I was taking care of her. Monroe: Do I feel happy in life? Um... if I'm generally anything, I guess I'm generally miserable. ( laughter ) Basically, it was terror that she was... gonna be found out as a faker. That somebody was gonna stand up and make some accusations against her. Bob: While she could be pleasant and fun and bubbly and, you know, lovely, she could go places that were just-- she was in pain. You could see it come over her, kind of, in a way. Rebecca: And you were always trying to buck her up? Miller: Yeah. Trying to get her to see the brighter side of things. Which is just about the most thankless job you can possibly imagine. Bob: He's typically not doing things just to please somebody else, but I think he really did as much as he was capable of doing to try and get her to chase those demons away. Rebecca: Do you think Dad was under her spell? I think so. Or under his own spell, of, you know, of being the hero, the savior, the one who could turn her. And "The Misfits," I think, is a great example of that. Gay Langland: I think you're the saddest girl I ever met. ( chuckles ) You're the first man that ever said that. I'm usually told how happy I am. Miller: I just thought it would be a terrific gift for her. 'Cause she'd never had a part in which she was supposed to be taken seriously. And she wanted to do that. Miller: I had written a story based originally on when I was living in Nevada, getting a divorce. I fell in with three cowboys while I was there, and they were hunting mustang. They were warring on these beasts. Rebecca: Yeah. When they won, it felt good, and they felt confirmed in their manhood. Murderers! You're only happy when you can see something die! Why don't kill yourselves and be happy?! You and your God's country! Freedom! In my film, Gable cuts them loose at the end. What are you doin'? But that didn't often happen. ( horse neighs ) Of course... what "The Misfits" was after was that this is an attempt by people to find some way of being at home in the world. And the world is so hard and so rejecting that they cannot find a niche in which to call home. Miller: The picture took an enormous amount of time 'cause she was sick all of the time. Rebecca: What was wrong with her? She couldn't really gain for herself the confidence that she had to have to do this. She was extremely anxious that she wasn't really good enough for it. Although that's not the way she'd express it. She would blame people for not treating her right. At the last minute she would find things to find imperfect about herself if she had to be somewhere. It was insecurity, of course, if you want to use the word. But, uh... ...she could be late, missing the day's work. So everybody's hanging around all day long. And the esprit of everybody was nonexistent, finally. Several hundred people involved, all leaning on this fragile creature. It's a terrific pressure. ( sobbing ) Guy: Come on, honey. We're gonna have some drinks. Miller: And the solution was all kinds of pills and... alcohol... gigantic barbiturates. They finally had to stop shooting for about ten days while she went back to Los Angeles and... just recuperated. There's no explaining a person like that. Terrible. Well... Because you have the gift for life, Roslyn. The rest of us, we're just lookin' for a place to hide, and watch it all go by. Amen. Here's to your life, Roslyn. I hope it goes on forever. We finally got through the film, and it was a pretty good film. It wasn't what I had hoped. We were separated during the shooting. And, uh... well, she went back to California and they started shooting another picture for Fox that she failed to complete. Rebecca: Yeah. And then you moved back here? Did you move-- Did you-- Well, I started to live up here a lot. Miller: As I was coming to the end of the writing of "After the Fall," the horrifying news came that Marilyn had died, apparently of an overdose of sleeping pills. When a reporter called, asking if I would be attending her funeral in California, stunned as I was, I answered, without thinking, "She won't be there." Rebecca: You were prone to walk away from conflict, naturally. But in your plays, there's a continual kind of return of conflict. I suppose it's because, there, I could live it out in the literature, in the writing, whereas in life, it was too painful, you see? So the pain went into the writing, whereas it was hard to sustain it in real life. I think that's part of what happened. Why do you think that is? I don't know, I just couldn't bear the idea of... people trying to destroy each other. Because I sensed very early on that all real arguments are murderous. There was a killing instinct in there that I feared. So I put it into the theater. Man: "After the Fall," Act One. The action takes place in the mind, thought, and memory of Quentin. It was partly out of a book, which is never mentioned, and that was Camus' book in which a man observes a young woman who throws herself into a rushing river. He doesn't go to save her. My question was, what if he had saved her? Miller: See, I think that all suicides are murdered. Uh, they are the victims of aggression... or sometimes the victims of truth. Quentin: Maggie, you want to die, and I don't know how to prevent it. Miller: In "After the Fall," one of the partners of this marriage cannot go forward with the illusion that the other one has. It means she dies alone, or they both go down. Or whoever can save himself, saves himself. Rebecca: In "After the Fall," Quentin essentially is trying himself for being able--to-- for the fact that he could have killed Maggie. In that sense, it reflects - the relationship with Marilyn? - Yeah, sure. Maggie: He's gonna put me away somewhere, is that it? Quentin: No, the doctor isn't considering-- You're not gonna put me anywhere, mister. Maggie, you have got to be supervised! Rebecca: And reconciling yourself with the fact that you didn't save her, but that in a sense, - you can't save anybody, on some level. - That's right. You got people who were far more difficult to change than I had allowed myself to believe. Maggie: Tell me what happened. Quentin: Maggie, we used one another. No! Miller: It was a very good production. It was very well done, and very successful with the audience. It experienced a lot of very strident, ugly criticism... and some extraordinarily vicious attacks. And...I managed to have an illusion that this wasn't really Marilyn. Which it wasn't, really. But it was close enough. Kushner: What's sort of wonderful about the play is, it's so profoundly broken, it's unsparing and it's brave, and I love the fact that he couldn't make it cohere because what he's grappling with, you know, he could never completely, you know, he was--he was putting his finger in the electric socket. "After the Fall" is, you know, he's too angry at her, he's too...devastated by what that suicide... meant to him as a repudiation of himself, as a narcissistic injury. Um...I mean, he was too frightened by her, and he can't quite, you know-- He does much better with Inge. Inge Miller: Incredible. It was a good year, you think? Well, I don't want to think about it. - Why? - Too good. I'm gonna cut up this here chicken. Whoa, this is cutting... a dream. It is cutting rightly? Miller: We met-- I was in a swimming pool. Inge: No, we first met when I came with Cartier-Bresson to photograph "The Misfits." The first time I listened to you, you were in the swimming pool. But we didn't-- I hardly saw her there. No. No. We were working, both of us, very hard. She was busy photographing everybody. But then we met again... a year later? Or maybe-- I went off to Argentina. First I want to France to photograph "Aimez-vous Brahms?" Then I went to Argentina to photograph a crazy movie with Yul Brynner called "Taras Bulba." And then I came back, and then I met you again like, maybe half a year later, in the Magnum office. You were looking for pictures I had taken, which they were making a book out of about "The Misfits." Right? I don't remember that, but I'm sure it happened. Rebecca: My mother suffered a lot during the war and after the war. She had to work in a munitions factory in Berlin. She was interrogated by Nazi officials because she wouldn't join the Hitler Youth, even though her father was a member of the Nazi Party. Inge: I was in Berlin in a factory. It was heavily bombed-- constantly. Rebecca: And when Berlin fell, where did you go? I walked from Berlin to Salzburg, because there was no transport. Everybody was walking, fleeing, there were refugees, dead horses, and all the people from the east with dead babies and-- horrible. So you kind of lose your mind a little bit. Rebecca: As much as she was somewhat of a damaged person by that, she was also such a hugely positive dynamo of a woman. She was the first female photographer to be a full member of Magnum Photos. ( camera shutter clicking ) And really built herself a spectacular life, filled with work and love affairs and a beautiful apartment and wonderful clothes, and she met Arthur, and he was a very wounded person at that point. ( typewriter keys clacking ) Rebecca: She believed in him enormously. She believed in his talent, and also in him as a person. And I think that he had come to a point where he felt terrible about himself. And I think that she rejuvenated him. Arthur was very-- he was a very lonely man, very lonesome, because when I first came, there was just one or two friends, I mean, nobody-- nobody came. I mean, I bring in all these folks and friends, I think in many ways, because he doesn't know how to reach out. Rebecca: Did you see a lot of the family when you got married? Inge: Yes, I saw them a lot, and they liked me because I was doing something, you know, being a photographer was fun for them, and they came with me, so I always had a very good relationship with both Bobby and Jane. Bob: That house was really not a real home, - until she came around, you know. - Rebecca: Yeah. Inge sort of put flowers on the table, and, you know, curtain on the windows, where it just-- it started to feel lived in. He seemed to be refreshed and renewed and kind of reinvigorated by it. Miller: For three days we went out and climbed the hillside, planting the hundreds of seedlings out of the pail. My wife Inge, pregnant then, carefully set roots in the slits I was cutting with a flat spade. Rebecca: Did you always think that you were always going to stay married to Arthur? No. No, not because of Arthur, but, simply, I didn't think anybody-- I don't know, everything was kind of a temporary idea. We were-- We were ready to try it. Rebecca: When I was born, my father was the one who knew more about babies. My mother picked out a baby carriage for me which was, in fact, a doll's carriage. My father had to inform her that I needed something bigger. I've been thinking about fatherhood and about what you think makes a good father. Oh, well... I think we create, especially the children, create these definitions. 'Cause they have to-- they're helpless. So they create the definition of... this-- this great force which can sweep them away or comfort them. And it's got sometimes very little to do with what the great force is feeling. Uh, I enjoyed being a father. I enjoyed, also, escaping being a father. Bob: You know, much of that relationship, as it went on through the years, was really trying to catch him when he had some time to, you know, spend time. Rebecca: What was he doing? What he always did, you know-- he was writing. I mean, that's what he did. - Right. - When he was in his studio, we tippy-toed around the studio and you could hear the keys clacking and you knew that you couldn't go in there. Joan: I think at times he was only interested in what interested him. There were times when he might be interested in something because he could use it. I was always in and out of my skin, because... I just couldn't be a father 24 hours a day... and still do what I was thinking I had to do. I mean, my mind would go off in whatever direction it was going, and then you say, "Oh, my God, I forgot to pick up my son," who's standing on a corner. Bob: I don't think he ever really understood-- felt that he understood me in a way that he felt he could be of much help. As we were getting to a place where we maybe could have a constructive father-son relationship, it was at the same time when the generations were getting further and further apart. So I was obviously gonna go where the energy was for me, which was into the counterculture, and he couldn't go there. And so in some ways it sort of was manifested in the relationship, he kind of was dismayed by it all. Rebecca: When I was growing up, he continued to write, but his life had become much less public, much more private. I think he might have been sheltering himself with his family. Rebecca: Do you think it was harder to be... in terms of-- for daughters or sons, do you think that that would have affected us? My own view is that it's harder to be a son, because there's a certain competition going on there. It's inevitable. It's like if you watch the animal kingdom, the most dangerous person or animal to the young male is his father. Rebecca: He would confide in me. He would talk to me about his worries about being able to write. I don't even know if I answered a lot of the time. I think it was as if I was part of him. But the father that I knew for the most part was a very funny, cuddly, jokey-- We would laugh so much. - Where's the nails, Dad? - Hand the nails out! - ( both laughing ) - OK. Now-- You gotta nail it-- Woman: No, you just stand still and try and keep your head at a level that you enjoy being most of the day. The object is to cut them all even. - Right. - So I don't look like--funny. - Ow! It hurts! - ( laughing ) We cover them with myth. The parent is always a mythological figure. It's the basis of all mythology, after all. With Zeus... he says-- You know, he's the father. He's the guy who throws the thunderbolts. Kills you, or raises you up... into glory. Rebecca: Do you remember when Danny was born? Bob: Dad called and said that it was a Down syndrome baby, that the baby was a boy, and that he and Inge were deciding what to do, and I think I may have said, "Well, what do you mean?" and he said, "Well... we may decide that he'll be better off in an institution." The way he put it was, "The doctors said this is probably what we should do. Woman: Back then they were told to not bring the children home and for them to grow up in another environment. ( typewriter keys clacking ) Rebecca: So, the reason I'm not showing my brother in this film is to protect his privacy. But he does have a very happy life now, and an independent life, and we've become very close. My mother visited my brother all of her life, but she was somewhat isolated in that. Over the years, my father visited him more and more and he developed more and more of a relationship with him. But publically, he never mentioned him, and he wasn't in the autobiography-- it wasn't easy for either of my parents to talk about him. I had the opportunity to finish this film in the 1990s, but I didn't know how to finish the film without talking about my brother, and I didn't really know how to do that. And I told my father this, and he offered to do an interview about it. And I put it off. And I put it off for a long time. And I had children, and I started making other films, and...he died. And now we'll never know what that interview would have said. Lyndon Johnson: I have today ordered to Vietnam 125,000 men... ...that this is really war. ( students chanting ) Miller: I was more of a rebel than a revolutionary in that situation. I wanted to protest, but I didn't want to establish a new rule of violence-- and some of them did. But many of 'em were very brave people. Reporter: Mr. Miller, why did you refuse the invitation of President Johnson to come to Washington to witness the signing of this bill? Miller: I have very strong feelings that we are at a crisis where the president must act in a way that he's not acting. This seems like endless war. Bob: He, I think, obviously supported the politics of what was going on, and as it became less political, and had to do with smoking dope and so on and so forth, he was pretty mystified. And the '60s was a total upheaval. Not just for me, but in general. And I couldn't, really, satisfactorily, express my-- my sense of... uh, the time. The theater had lost its prestige. The young folks were looking in an entirely different direction for their ideas and for their feelings. I remember I had a very successful play, "The Price," at that time. Kushner: It's the first time that he really just sort of announced a kind of Yiddish... it's not shtick, but that diction. And he had such a phenomenal ear for it. Gregory Solomon: You called me, so I came. What should I do, lay down and die? In "Salesman," the family could be a Protestant family. Certainly the people in "View From the Bridge" are Italian-Americans. In "Crucible," he worked to find a constrained early American speech for those people. And then you finally feel when the junk dealer shows up in that attic... Woman: Will you be very long, Mr. Solomon? Gregory Solomon: Well, with furniture, you never know-- can be short, can be long-- can be medium. And it's like, "Ahh... there it is." Mike Wallace: How Jewish are you? Miller: Absolutely Jewish, sure. But I just inherited, I think from my father, the attitude of being an American more than a Jew. Miller: Even though my play was successful, I had wonderful people in it, it was very nicely done, but you got the feeling it didn't matter anymore. The whole game was not worth the candle. So you made people feel this or feel that or laugh or weep-- so, what the hell's the difference? What's the point of it all? Miller: I didn't feel there was anybody out there who was interested-- I felt I was shouting into a barrel. For example, this whole Cain and Abel story. It was to reverse the usual process. The usual process is, there's God, and he creates the people. In my play, the people are there first, and they create the god. Whom they proceed to obey and adorn with all kinds of powers. What it was was an attempt to show why there had to be some kind of a moral system, or there would be the end of the world. I thought that was interesting, but nobody got it. Not very-- really very much. ( birds singing, squawking ) Rebecca: My perception as I grew up, which was basically the '70s, was that you had a lot of disappointments in the theater during that time. Mostly, I would say. Yeah. Uh... I agree with you. It was horrifying. I mean, the way Arthur was treated by critics, is, you know-- if anybody cares about theater criticism, they should certainly feel that it is a permanent mark of shame. Just dismissing play after play after play, and sort of "Well, you know, it's just..." And with a kind of laziness, just this kind of, "Why do we care what this old man has to say about anything?" Rebecca: Did you ever feel that you were losing your muse? I felt that I was out of place, more than anything else. I tell you why, concretely, it's because in Europe my stuff was always accepted. It worked on-- whether it be in Britain or Germany... very often France, Italy. Rebecca: I think it was hurtful for him that in his own country he was dismissed. But he also had this kind of ebullience and belief in himself that just kept bubbling up, you know, that was his essential life-force. 8:00, he was at his desk, and he'd come down at noon. It was like punching a timeclock, I mean, this to him was a-- he had a workingman's schedule, like a blue collar ethic of his. You know, and my father, when he wasn't working on his plays or when he wasn't writing, in terms of our everyday life, it was all oriented around work. His idea was like, "If you can make it yourself, you should make it yourself." He made the coffee table, he made the dining table, he made the bookshelves himself. I remember when I asked for a stereo when I was something like 14 years old. Instead of getting the plastic stereo that I was hoping for, that everyone else had, my father made me a stereo out of wood. And he had found these enormous knobs out of--from the dump. - Do you still write? - Writing every day, right up in that building. - Plays? - Yeah. I'm writing a play now. Don't ask me why, but I love doing it. Did some work on that play. I think it's pretty good now-- to my surprise. Look, you write long enough-- If you quit, that's one thing. If you're gonna go on writing, the art is to turn your back on what hasn't worked, and go forward to what you think might well work. 'Cause a human being is many-faceted, there are all kinds of different emotions and attitudes that we're all capable of, and you gotta find those that communicate something. I never blame other people. You can't do that. 'Cause it's not true. One day they'll catch up with something, or they won't. But the voice is the important thing, that you don't go silent. Rebecca: Speeding? OK. Man: Yeah, 39 and 8. OK, Pop. Yeah, we're on. All right, this is not so much a play as an exploration of an area between life and death. And it may someday be a play; at the moment, it's simply a long fragment. Miller: Well, the play I'm doing now is basically an instinctual piece of work. "People want. They want, and they don't know what they want. The American closet is full of perfectly good clothes that they can't see themselves wearing anymore. Miller: Instinctual in the sense that I'm relying on the fact that inside of my head, there is a structure, whose outlines I can't detect at this point, but whose emotional sound and weight and color I feel very strongly. I wouldn't have done that 25 years ago. - You see? - Rebecca: Mm-hmm. But in this play, what's making you write, what's the theme that's pushing you ahead? Or is there one? I think it's more-- it's less a theme than an air of wonder... an air of wonder and amusement... at people. And how... how wonderful they are. - Man: It's excellent! - Inge: I love it! - ( overlapping chatter ) - That's as far as I got. Inge: It's really great. ( laughing ) It's fun, isn't it? Rebecca: Oh, yeah, you gotta-- It's all one improvisation after another. Inge: Yeah, but it's marvelous. Well, here it is. Young Man: Well, what would you say God is? Or is that too definite? Mr. Peters: Not at all. God is precisely what is not there when you need Him. ( chatter ) Arthur, it's just like a great jazz riff. It's so bold. Well, that's what I was trying to get at. But do you think there is a critic in New York who's gonna see that? ( Guare speaking ) Miller: Well, what can I say? What was his thrust? Basically, that it was boring. He saw no insights in it, he saw nothing much in it. Inge: This is Lola Cavindo, whom I called on the mobile telephone. She said that in the ABC was a big article loving "Mr. Peters' Connection." Some Spanish person saw it. And it was a big thing, and it's the "ao of Arthur Miller," and "nominado para Tony, y todo, y todo, y todo." She's very excited, and she says she never reads reviews anyway. It will have to... find another way to penetrate. 'Cause this will kill it... for this run. But I have no questions about it. It'll come back. Art is long. Rebecca: What do you mean? Life is short. I forgot the Latin. ( crying ) You gave her Mama's stockings. I gave you an order! Don't touch me, you liar! You apologize for that! You fake! Rebecca: That Dustin Hoffman revival of "Salesman" was the beginning of a kind of renaissance-- all the old plays started to get done again in this country and all over the world. ( dialogue spoken in Japanese ) Miller: It's the happiest thing in my professional life, I think. ( cheering ) I mean, some of these plays are 50 years old. There aren't many things in this culture that are 50 years old that are still usable. Rebecca: "'A View From the Bridge' prompts something of the emotional response one is supposed to feel, but seldom does, when seeing 'King Lear' or 'Oedipus Rex.' Mr. Miller again shows us that contemporary plays can still move, disturb, provoke, and even shock." Inge: Pretty good! Miller: Well, you see, if you wait long enough... "The Crucible" is gonna start shooting in about a week. My son Bobby is producing it-- your brother. Rebecca: I know. Miller: Yeah, they built a whole town on an island, unbelievably enough, off the coast of Massachusetts. It really looks like-- you walk in there, and you're in a different time. It's like a dream! Rebecca: But it's amazing, isn't it, that they're doing all these plays now at once? What do you think that is? I really don't know. Well... it happens in life, you know? Occasionally. People suddenly wake up and say, "Oh, yeah, that." And they do them. But I wouldn't take it too seriously. They'll forget about 'em soon enough. - ( feigns snoring ) - Don't be so pessimistic! Pessimism is one defense I have against optimism. There's your mother, crawling down the hill. - See the path I cut there? - Inge: Yeah, we went there. Rebecca: We went in there already. - Isn't that a nice path? - It's beautiful. Inge: It's beautiful! You can go right onto the brook and then up in the-- Tomorrow we should make a longer walk, up in the woods with a hard-boiled egg. Yes, we can plant a hard-boiled egg in the woods. - ( typewriter keys clacking ) - That's a pretty one. Rebecca: She used to go on trips to photograph various things. And she would go for about two weeks, She realized he could stand it for two weeks to be on his own. You want the wing? Why not? Rebecca: And then she had to come back. Well, you know, to be a couple is-- is work. Mix up the salad. Mix up the salad. I have to warm. Otherwise, it gets cold. It's not warm, it's not right. Inge: I've lived alone a long time, and I totally enjoyed living alone. But now I'm-- Well, it's a kind of a mutual love and respect, and to be there for somebody, and somebody there for you, is wonderful. - See where this stick is? - Yeah? Well, it should go... Miller: They're naming a street after her. Did you know that? Rebecca: I didn't know that. - Inge: In the village. - It's gonna be Calle Inge Morath. - Where? - In a Spanish village. They saw their photographs, you know, in the Spanish show. They couldn't believe it. They said, "You put us into history! Could we name a street after you?" They're making a big festivity on the 12th. Miller: We did a couple of books, one about China, about Russia, about the countryside here, an intimate coming-together between two disciplines. She's just terrific. Let's face it. I can say that after-- how many years? 35 years? Married to her. That's a long time. It's longer than that. Longer? Yeah. But it seemed like a day. Rebecca: Inge was diagnosed with lymphoma, and she lived with it for a couple of years, and Arthur was very close by her. But then suddenly she got very sick and died. And that came as a shock to him. It felt like the death of a very young woman, strangely. And he was quite lost after that. Nichols: When your mother died I wrote him a letter, and I got such a letter back. And the letter ended about how what he realized now was that we're all hanging by a thread. Man: You ever think of what your obituary might mean or say, and what you would want it to say? What would you want it to say? - "Writer." - Writer. Well, tell me more. That's all. That...should say it. Rebecca: All right. You set? OK, Pop! Miller: There are thousands of plays that come and go and nobody can sustain any great interest in them over any period of time. But for works of any degree of seriousness, they're presenting some question as to what is real and what is simply ephemera. I mean, no play is finished; plays are abandoned. And they're abandoned because you can only get so close, and then it doesn't allow you to come any closer. Rebecca: Close to...? To the hidden narrative, hidden truth of what's goin' on. It reminds me a little bit of the idea of Kabbalah, even. Yeah. I think that's a-- there is a resemblance. It's almost as though the human being is a work of the imagination, of somebody's imagination, maybe God's imagination. So do you think that a play is a great play because it reflects something deeply about human nature, or that is has some little bit of what you would call, in this case, "God" in it? I'm not sure what it's saying about human nature, I think it's the process of approaching the unwritten and the unspoken and the unspeakable. And the closer you get to it, the more life there seems to be. Miller: I have lived more than half my life in the Connecticut countryside, all the time expecting to get some play or book finished, so I can spend more time in the city, where everything is happening. But little happens here that I don't make happen, except the sun coming up and going down and the leaves emerging and dropping off, and an occasional surprise, like the recent appearance of coyotes in the woods. And I am in this room, from which I can sometimes look out at dusk, and see them warily moving through the barren winter trees, and I am, I suppose, doing what they're doing-- making myself possible for those who come after me. I am a mystery to them until they tire of it and move on, but the truth-- the first truth, probably-- is that we are all connected, watching one another, even the trees. ( music playing ) |
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