Youngstown State Oral History Program - Leigh Brackett

A brilliant and wide-ranging interview:

"H: That's true. You carry these things around with you all the time. Very often, I get this far-away look and Ed will say, "You're thinking, aren't you?"
R: Do you try on your thoughts with each other?
H: Yes, a good bit. Our marriage almost broke up shortly
after it began because I had an order for a novel from
Startling Stories. It was a whole $800 and boy did
we need it.
E: What year was this?
H: This was in 1947; we were married at the end of 1946. I sat down at my typewriter and wrote the opening chapters. I handed them to Ed, he read it and said, "This is great. Where do you go from here?" I said, "I haven't the foggiest idea." He said, "That is a so-and-so way to write a story." Right there, we discovered we couldn't collaborate too well. So, I went on with it. Then I said, "I think I'm getting into a little bit of trouble here." He said, "Let me read it." So he read it and he said, "Back of chapter two, put in a Dhuvian--a Dhuvian being a strange alien character--on the ship." I could have killed him. The trouble was, he was right. So I had to throw away four chapters and start over again.
Thank you for this interview. We really feel it's been a privilege. We've enjoyed it so much.
You're so welcome. I hope I have been helpful to you. I'm flattered that you came all this way."

"Authors: Brackett, Leigh.
Roderick, Juanita.
Earnhart, Hugh G.
Title: Science fiction writing
Date Issued: 1975
Description: "Experiences as a Writer."
Transcript of interview taped on October 7, 1975. Tape length 63 minutes. Tape stored in History Department."

http://hdl.handle.net/1989/803


5 out of 5

http://digital.maag.ysu.edu:8080/jspui/bitstream/1989/803/2/OH19.pdf

Meet the Artists - Marcus Boas

""Frank Frazetta was my main influence," said Boas. "I started seeing his stuff on Creepy and Eerie and Vampirella magazines and the Conan paperbacks. So when I first started out I took a couple of my favorite Frazetta paintings and I just tried to copy it, to see if I could do it. That's how I actually started and got an idea of how to do it."'

...

""One of my favorite authors was Robert E. Howard. I was reading the Conan paperbacks, I got into illustrating the Conan hardcover books and I did a lot of magazine covers and paperback covers for a lot of Robert E. Howard characters back then.""

http://www.kasocomics.com/marcusboas.html

Empire Interview: Screenwriter - Lawrence Kasdan

"How different is the Leigh Brackett draft from what ended up being shot?

There's nothing. There's no connection. You know, George is a better one to answer that question, but I never looked at it that seriously. We didn't work from that. He said, "God bless her, but she wasn't doing anything like I wanted it." She had written some great movies. But I don't think they were ever on the same page about Empire. I think George hired her because of her extraordinary history. But what George needs, and particularly in Star Wars, is someone who's going to do what he had in mind -- make it happen.

You're used to being in creative control these days. Was it difficult being more of a hired hand, making someone else's vision happen?"


4.5 out of 5

http://starwars.com/themovies/episodev/news20100318.html?page=2

Experiences As A Writer - Leigh Brackett

Interview by Juanita Roderick and Hugh G. Earthart 7 October 1975 for Youngstown Ohio State University Oral History program.


Unseen.

Interview with Leigh Brackett - Anonymous Anonymous

Ballantines, 1:2 Oct 1974. Apparently part of the Leigh Brackett Special Collection at Eastern New Mexico University. Did the publisher ballantine gave a trade mag or flyer or promo newletter?


Unseen.

5000 Light-years From Kinsman - Joe Walders

Transcript of an interview.

Unseen.

An Interview with Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton - David Truesdale and Paul McGuire

Truesdale, David &:. McGuire, Paul. "An Interview with Leigh Brackett and
Edmond Hamilton." Science Fiction Review 21 (May 1977): pp. 6-15.

(Now online! Thanks very much Dave!)

"Following our journey from Oshkosh, WI to Minneapolis, MN for Minicon 10 in April of 1975—our first real science fiction convention (see the William Tenn, Donald A. Wollheim, and Judy-Lynn & Lester del Rey interviews)—we were hooked. So back the small staff of Tangent (all three of us) went to Minneapolis for Minicon 11, in April of 1976. We were more prepared this time for the interviews we hoped to get, having done our homework on specifically selected authors. Among several others from that weekend (including Jack Williamson), the interview with Ed Hamilton and Leigh Brackett turned out to be, without question, the highlight of our convention. Seated comfortably in their hotel room one afternoon, we spent nearly two hours with them. Ed and Leigh put us at our ease immediately with their casual laughter and relaxed demeanor. Their good mood put us in a good mood, erasing any and all feeling of intimidation we might have felt. They were open and giving with their answers, often playing off each others stories about themselves and other writers they had befriended over the years, most notably stories concerning Ray Bradbury, Henry Kuttner, Jack Williamson, and John W. Campbell. I will never forget this interview, and the hours I spent with Ed and Leigh. They were two of the most friendly, warm, and wonderful people I have ever met.

A few hours before the presentation of the Hugo awards at the Los Angeles worldcon in 1996, Darrell Schweitzer and I bumped into each other and decided to grab a bite to eat before the festivities began. We talked about this and that, and I asked him about my belief that the Tangent Brackett/Hamilton interview was indeed the last one ever conducted with them both, as I had read another interview with them (by him) in a subsequent issue of Amazing. He informed me that his was conducted much earlier than mine, but that Amazing had held onto it for some time, and that indeed the Tangent interview was the very last interview ever done with them both."

This is great stuff - and some pretty funny bits in here too.


5 out of 5

http://www.tangentonline.com/index.php/interviews-columnsmenu-166/1270-classic-leigh-brackett-a-edmond-hamilton-interview

Grab what you can get: the screenwriter as journeyman plumber a conversation with Leigh Brackett - Steve Swires

(Information below is from Andrew Sergeant at the NLA, I have not read it myself as yet)

Runs from pages 413 to 421 of the Aug/Sep 1976 issue of Films In Review.
It consists of a couple of paragraphs of introductory information, on her career and life, followed by the transcript of Swires' interview with her (at a science fiction convention in Washington in September 1974), and features a small photo of Brackett with Howard Hawkes on page 415, working on the script for 'El Dorado'.

There are a few excerpts of this online here :-

"LB: That was Hawks. I have been at swords' points with him many a time because I don't like doing a thing over again, and he does. I remember one day he and John Wayne and I were sitting in the office, and he said we'll do such and such a thing. I said: "But Howard, you did it in Rio Bravo. You don't want to do this over again." He said: "Why not?" And John Wayne, all six feet four of him, looked down and said: "If it was good once it'll be just as good again." I know when I'm outgunned, so I did it. But I just don't like repeating myself. However, I'm wrong about half the time."

and here's a quote from the text :

"The "ten-day wonder" was because my agent, Hugh King, had been with Myron
Selznick, my agency at that time, and he had gone over to Republic as story
editor and had sort of managed to shoehorn me in because they were doing this
horror film. They decided to cash in on the Universal monster school, and I had
been doing science fiction, and to them it all looked the same?"bug-eyed
monsters." It made no difference. I did The Vampire's Ghost there, and just out
of the clear blue sky this other thing happened, purely on the strength of a
hard-boiled mystery novel I had published. Howard Hawks read the book and liked
it. He didn't buy the book, for which I can't blame him, but he liked the
dialogue and I was put under contract to him.

You worked on the screenplay of The Big Sleep with William Faulkner. I wouldn't
say that you collaborated, but both of your names are in the credits as having
written the script, along with Jules Furthman .

I went to the studio the first day absolutely appalled. I had been writing pulp
stories for about three years, and here is William Faulkner, who was one of the
great literary lights of the day, and how am I going to work with him? What
have I got to offer, as it were? This was quickly resolved, because when I
walked into the office, Faulkner came out of his office with the book The Big
Sleep and he put it down and said: "I have worked out what we're going to do.
We will do alternate sections. I will do these chapters and you will do those
chapters." And that was the way it was done. He went back into his office and I
didn't see him again, so the collaboration was quite simple. I never saw what
he did and he never saw what I did. We just turned our stuff in to Hawks."



4.5 out of 5

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/conversationswithleighbrackett.html

Tony Macklin Interview - Leigh Brackett

Almost fell over when I saw this. Audio, over an hour long. Talks about her writing career and how she got started, both SF and movies. Great stuff.


5 out of 5

http://tonymacklin.net/audio/brackett.mp3

Leigh Brackett: Interview - Paul Walker

Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews, (1978, Paul Walker, LUNA Publications, 0-930346-01-7, $6.95, 425pp, tp, coll)

The Amazing Interview Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton - Darrell Schweitzer

An informative interview talking about their work and the genre. Closing on 5000 words. Well worth getting. Anyone publishing or working on them would certainly like this.

"AMAZING: What does the term "space opera" mean to you?
BRACKETT: Well, it's a term that rather annoys us both because it has developed into a term of approbrium, for any story that has an element of adventure and action. I happen to like action stories and adventure stories, and to me this sense of wonder and all that goes into a space opera is ab­solutely fascinating. I enjoy space opera and I like writing them.
HAMILTON: Bob Tucker invented that title when he was a fan and I was re­proaching him last spring again for having done so, because when you come right down to it, what are the astronauts' adventures but space op­era? Including especially Apollo 13. That rescue of the men stranded out in space by bringing them back in and towing them with the starter, the module towing the other ship—that's just pure space opera. The old pic­tures on the covers of AMAZING STORIES showing men walking in spacesuits on the moon—they could be taken right from the photographs. I agree with Leigh, of course. I'm an old space opera fan. I don't like to see it mocked.
AMAZING: What is the most important value of this type of writing? BRACKETT: Oh, the sense of adven­ture, the sense of opening up whole vistas of new worlds and possibilities of all sorts of lifeforms, encounters, excitements and all these things. I don't know whether it'll actually occur or not, but when I was young the stories of Mars by Edgar Rice Bur­roughs, which set me on my road to
ruin as a science fiction writer, were so much more fascinating than all the other things I read about Indians and pirates and so on, all of which were quite authentic and real. This was a step beyond and it set me out into such realms of wonder and fascination that I've never been able to leave them. If you want philosophy, that's another matter. I'm writing for enter­tainment and if I want philosophy I'll read philosophy, but I don't particu­larly care to have it mixed with my fiction.
HAMILTON: I think the value is what you might call a seminal value, that bit by bit the old magazine stories fil­tered down through the public mind and established the concept of space travel simply because the people would see so many covers on magazines and so forth, so that it was easier, I think, for the public to ac­cept the space program. We contri­buted nothing directly to it. We didn't even prophesy it correctly, al­though we made some lucky hits, but well, when I was a youngster there was a proverb, "You could as soon do that as fly to the moon." It was a proverb to show something not possi­ble, and I think all this somewhat lurid literature penetrated down to the public to make them accept the space program, which is a costly busi­ness, and I think that's where it's chief value lies."


5 out of 5