by Tony Hobday in Arts News
Having been in the esteemed company of author Armistead Maupin, for a short two hours, on June 23, I left with the sensation of actually having been at a party at 28 Barbary Lane. Housed in an airy gallery located in the 15th and 15th district, Maupin stood over a crowd of 100 or so adoring fans like the gay alter ego of Jesus, the white-washed walls illuminating him, and read from the second chapter in the ninth volume of his ‘Tales of the City’ series, titled The Days of Anna Madrigal – the final book he irresolutely stated, summoning a few dubious chuckles from the audience.
Two decades ago, Maupin believed, after six books, the series had reached its culmination. “When I left the series in 1989, (the character of) Michael Tolliver was found to be HIV positive – at that time it was pretty much a death sentence. I didn’t want the series to end with which ‘the gay man dies,’ because that was the scenario with so many books, so many movies, year to year to year,” he pointed out. “I wanted Michael to sort of be a beacon of hope. I wanted to leave the series with him living his life, consuming it and being strong.”
Come 2007, Michael Tolliver Lives — however, the book received much criticism. This seventh book was initially written as a stand-alone from the series, according to Maupin; hence the backlash on the author for having written MTL in first-person narrative, unlike all previous incarnations of Tales. Maupin simply explained to the audience, “I wrote MTL in first person because I really wanted to celebrate my generation of gay men. I don’t regret it.”
Then, in 2010, came Mary Ann in Autumn; the eighth installment, in which we find an embittered Mary Ann returning to San Francisco seeking solace from Michael. “Who really is Mary Ann,” asked a fan, hinting to the nonfictional basis of the character, “and what did she do to piss you off so bad?” Maupin replied with an observation about himself made by a friend: “I think that Michael Tolliver is the person you wish you were, and Mary Ann Singleton is the person you’re afraid you are.”
An astonishing cliffhanger in Mary Ann in Autumn, seemingly puts the ex-residents of 28 Barbary Lane on a precipice. Set among present day San Francisco and 1936 Winnemucca, Nev., The Days of Anna Madrigal, will open many more windows into the beloved character, from her younger years in a brothel to the ripe old age of 92.
“We just came from Winnemucca, by the way,” Maupin opened the evening, referring to himself, his husband Christopher and their dog Philo, who’s named after Philo T. Farnsworth. They were there researching for the book a place called “The Line” – an area of Winnemucca lined with whorehouses, he said. (Decades ago it consisted of five brothels in a row, and of which only two remain today.) He told of the uses of Lysol and rose water, “Lysol was sold as a feminine hygiene product in the 1930s and 40s. It was also believed to prevent pregnancy.” He also suggested to the audience, with scads of enthusiasm, to google “1930’s whorehouse menu.” Which I did and wished I hadn’t.
Maupin’s stop in Salt Lake City was the first in a national tour called the Madrigal Mystery Tour, and which will eventually drop off Maupin and his family to settle in Santa Fe, N.M., via The Burning Man, he said, uprising a roar of laughter from the crowd. The announcement prompted more anecdotes – he reflected on a dinner party he attended and was seated next to “Shirl” (Shirley MacLaine), “… she said (to me) ‘I’m trying to figure out who your gorgeous husband reminds me of.’ So I had to sit there and play the guessing game with her and she finally said, ‘Christian Bale, Christian Bale!’ I said Christian Bale’s an asshole! And she said ‘No, he’s an actor.’” She then preceded to tell me that it was very important to move off the coast because something terrible was going to be happening very soon. And I asked which coast and she said ‘any coast.’”
“So I told this story to Olympia (Dukakis),” Maupin continued, “and Olympia said ‘I’m 82 fucking years old, I don’t have time for the apocalypse!’”
Olympia, whom as it became readily apparent that Maupin holds in the highest of regard, was (and is) Anna Madrigal. Olympia played the part of the pot-smoking landlady of 28 Barbary Lane in the 1993 miniseries of Tales. “Oly, she went out and hired a transgender consultant for her role,” Maupin told us, “and talked to this women about why she did it and how difficult was it and what emotional journey did she make. She asked ‘why would you go through this process, given that you know how hard it would be to live in this society as that person?’ And she (the consultant) said, ‘all my life, I’ve wanted a friendship with women.’”
Following the reading and spirited conversation copies of the first two chapters of The Days of Anna Madrigal were put on auction: “Who’s going to help me with the auction, I’ve never sold myself before,” Maupin joked. Auctioned off at $325 per chapter, with the total of $650 plus a percentage of the ticket proceeds benefiting the Trevor Project, the evening ended in great success.
Two days prior to Maupin’s visit to Salt Lake City, he was presented with San Francisco’s Silver Cable Car Award. The San Francisco Travel Association, each year, honors an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to San Francisco’s visitor industry.
“Through newspapers, books, films and the stage, Armistead Maupin has introduced people around the world to a place that is as unique as the person reading about it. In his descriptions of people and places, he imparts a sense of acceptance and tolerance that lets the reader know that all are welcome here,” said Joe D’Alessandro, president and CEO of San Francisco Travel, during the ceremony. “It’s no wonder that so many people say they knew they wanted to visit – or even live – in San Francisco after reading his books.”
In Maupin’s acceptance he said, “I’m so happy to have this opportunity to stand here and thank you, all of you, and this city for giving me my life, for giving me my story, for allowing me to be me, allowing me to find who I was, and for continuing to do that. That’s scornfully referred to as ‘San Francisco values’ in other parts of the country. Here it’s something we’re proud of and you can see it here in this amazing amalgamation of gay and straight and ‘traveling,’ as I refer to it. I’m just so grateful to you San Francisco, thank you so much. I will always, always consider myself a San Franciscan, no matter where I am. San Francisco made me a citizen of the world. And I’ve learned this from people who read my books. Even people who don’t come here love it for the same reasons that those of us who live here love it. And that’s why it’s so magical. I’ve very honored. Thank you very much.”
The Days of Anna Madrigal is scheduled to be published in 2013.
http://gaysaltlake.com/2012/07/05/like-rose-water-and-lysol-an-evening-with-armistead-maupin-is-breathtaking/
Showing posts with label Maupin Interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maupin Interview. Show all posts
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
The Madrigal Mystery Tour with Armistead Maupin
SATURDAY, 30 JUNE 2012 13:48 STEPHEN DESROCHES
Armistead Maupin stunned San Francisco when he announced last month that he was leaving the city by the bay, the very city with which he is synonymous for his legendary series Tales of the City. Maupin is as San Francisco as are the Golden Gate Bridge, Beach Blanket Babylon and the hippies of Haight-Ashbury. Maupin leaving San Francisco is like moving the Statue of Liberty out of New York. But alas, it’s true. Maupin and his husband Christopher Turner are moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. But first, they will criss-cross the country, landing in Provincetown before heading to the Land of Enchantment.
“Yes, it was a huge decision,” says Maupin, riding in a car leaving Lincoln, Nebraska, where he stopped with Turner for a veggie wrap. “We need more sky and more nature. We don’t have a place to live yet. It’s curiously liberating. I needed to shake the cobwebs and go on a new adventure.”
To cleanse the mental palate, Maupin and Turner are traveling around the United States on what some have dubbed “The Madrigal Mystery Tour,” so named for the beloved landlady in his novels. The mid-point destination of the trip is Provincetown, where the two have rented a house in the far East End where Maupin plans to write. He will also present two readings from his next book in the Tales of the City series, a work-in-progress titled The Days of Anna Madrigal, at the Crown and Anchor this month.
This next tale focuses on Mrs. Madrigal, the transgender, pot-smoking owner of 28 Barbary Lane, jumping back and forth through time as an old woman and back to her childhood as a little boy growing up in a Nevada brothel. On their road trip, Maupin stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada, a town that was once home to fabulously ornate bordellos, to do research on brothels for the book.
“Oh dear, we’re passing a chicken truck. It’s the saddest thing,” says Maupin, momentarily distracted by the sights of the Nebraska highway. “Brothels aren’t what they used to be. [The] 1930’s Winnemucca would be embarrassed by the sad state of whorehouses today.”
Despite the decline in the sophisticated brothel, Maupin says he is excited by this latest continuation of a storyline that has meant so much to so many readers, as well as to the culture of San Francisco and for documenting the LGBT experience. His work grew from a column in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s to a series of bestselling books, to movies, and now a stage musical. It’s been thrilling to watch his work and characters grow legs of their own, says Maupin.
“It’s heavenly to have other artists to come on board with your work,” says Maupin. “I’m a huge fan of most of the artists that have interpreted my work over the years. It makes you believe in the mythology.”
Maupin first arrived in San Francisco in 1971, still a time of hippies and be-ins, and also on the cusp of the days of Harvey Milk and gay rights. His start at writing fictionalized serials in the newspaper was, even for the time, an aging art – one he reinvigorated. But in today’s world, where technological changes have shifted writing to the Internet and corporate media ownership is strangling that creativity, Maupin sees these live readings as so important for writers to personalize the stories, rather than have them only on the page, or on a glowing screen.
“I was basically blogging my life through fiction for 36 years,” says Maupin of his Tales of the City stories. “All the action is really online these days, which is harder as there are so many options. It was easier to reach an audience before. It’s good and bad as far as I’m concerned. There are so many options, good stuff gets lost. I tell new writers just to reach a human audience. Print it and put it in a coffeehouse. Just reach a human audience. That’s why I do the readings. It is so important to have that eye-to-eye contact.”
Maupin has been to Provincetown several times before, but this marks the first time he is doing any public event. Fascinated by Provincetown, he chose to stay a month to be able to learn more about the town as a community rather than a tourist destination. He also plans to get work done, and plan for his next phase of life in New Mexico.
“Thinking about my work has me reflecting on my own personality,” says Maupin. “A friend once told me Michael Tolliver was the person I wish I was and that Mary Ann is the person I’m afraid I am. It takes a close friend to observe and be able to tell you that.”
Teatime with Armistead Maupin is at the Paramount at the Crown and Anchor, 247 Commercial St. on Monday, July 9 and Friday, July 20 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $35 for VIP and are available at the box office or at www.onlyatthecrown.com. A book signing and after party will be at the Wave Bar at the Crown and Anchor immediately following the event. For more information call 508.487.1430 or visit www.onlyatthecrown.com.
http://provincetownmagazine.org/Books/the-madrigal-mystery-tour-with-armistead-maupin
Armistead Maupin stunned San Francisco when he announced last month that he was leaving the city by the bay, the very city with which he is synonymous for his legendary series Tales of the City. Maupin is as San Francisco as are the Golden Gate Bridge, Beach Blanket Babylon and the hippies of Haight-Ashbury. Maupin leaving San Francisco is like moving the Statue of Liberty out of New York. But alas, it’s true. Maupin and his husband Christopher Turner are moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. But first, they will criss-cross the country, landing in Provincetown before heading to the Land of Enchantment.
“Yes, it was a huge decision,” says Maupin, riding in a car leaving Lincoln, Nebraska, where he stopped with Turner for a veggie wrap. “We need more sky and more nature. We don’t have a place to live yet. It’s curiously liberating. I needed to shake the cobwebs and go on a new adventure.”
To cleanse the mental palate, Maupin and Turner are traveling around the United States on what some have dubbed “The Madrigal Mystery Tour,” so named for the beloved landlady in his novels. The mid-point destination of the trip is Provincetown, where the two have rented a house in the far East End where Maupin plans to write. He will also present two readings from his next book in the Tales of the City series, a work-in-progress titled The Days of Anna Madrigal, at the Crown and Anchor this month.
This next tale focuses on Mrs. Madrigal, the transgender, pot-smoking owner of 28 Barbary Lane, jumping back and forth through time as an old woman and back to her childhood as a little boy growing up in a Nevada brothel. On their road trip, Maupin stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada, a town that was once home to fabulously ornate bordellos, to do research on brothels for the book.
“Oh dear, we’re passing a chicken truck. It’s the saddest thing,” says Maupin, momentarily distracted by the sights of the Nebraska highway. “Brothels aren’t what they used to be. [The] 1930’s Winnemucca would be embarrassed by the sad state of whorehouses today.”
Despite the decline in the sophisticated brothel, Maupin says he is excited by this latest continuation of a storyline that has meant so much to so many readers, as well as to the culture of San Francisco and for documenting the LGBT experience. His work grew from a column in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s to a series of bestselling books, to movies, and now a stage musical. It’s been thrilling to watch his work and characters grow legs of their own, says Maupin.
“It’s heavenly to have other artists to come on board with your work,” says Maupin. “I’m a huge fan of most of the artists that have interpreted my work over the years. It makes you believe in the mythology.”
Maupin first arrived in San Francisco in 1971, still a time of hippies and be-ins, and also on the cusp of the days of Harvey Milk and gay rights. His start at writing fictionalized serials in the newspaper was, even for the time, an aging art – one he reinvigorated. But in today’s world, where technological changes have shifted writing to the Internet and corporate media ownership is strangling that creativity, Maupin sees these live readings as so important for writers to personalize the stories, rather than have them only on the page, or on a glowing screen.
“I was basically blogging my life through fiction for 36 years,” says Maupin of his Tales of the City stories. “All the action is really online these days, which is harder as there are so many options. It was easier to reach an audience before. It’s good and bad as far as I’m concerned. There are so many options, good stuff gets lost. I tell new writers just to reach a human audience. Print it and put it in a coffeehouse. Just reach a human audience. That’s why I do the readings. It is so important to have that eye-to-eye contact.”
Maupin has been to Provincetown several times before, but this marks the first time he is doing any public event. Fascinated by Provincetown, he chose to stay a month to be able to learn more about the town as a community rather than a tourist destination. He also plans to get work done, and plan for his next phase of life in New Mexico.
“Thinking about my work has me reflecting on my own personality,” says Maupin. “A friend once told me Michael Tolliver was the person I wish I was and that Mary Ann is the person I’m afraid I am. It takes a close friend to observe and be able to tell you that.”
Teatime with Armistead Maupin is at the Paramount at the Crown and Anchor, 247 Commercial St. on Monday, July 9 and Friday, July 20 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $35 for VIP and are available at the box office or at www.onlyatthecrown.com. A book signing and after party will be at the Wave Bar at the Crown and Anchor immediately following the event. For more information call 508.487.1430 or visit www.onlyatthecrown.com.
http://provincetownmagazine.org/Books/the-madrigal-mystery-tour-with-armistead-maupin
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Maupin to leave San Francisco
Leah Garchik
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Armistead Maupin, who on Thursday will be honored with a Silver Cable Card award from San Francisco Travel, leaves town the next day as step one of a move to Santa Fe. Maupin, husband Christopher Turner and their Labradoodle, are driving cross-country to Provinceton, where they'll spend a chunk of summer, before returning west for a stop at Burning Man before winding up in New Mexico, where they plan to re-settle.
The re-location has "been percolating for a while," he said by phone Monday. Santa Fe "has a different magic from San Francisco, but it has magic, and I need an autumnal adventure." Turner, in the background, wisecracked that the movie reflects Maupin's "retirement and my mid-life crisis." But "retirement" isn't really accurate because the author is working on a new "Tales" book, "The Days of Anna Madrigal." He'll be giving a series of readings while they drive cross-country on what they call "the Madrigal Mystery Tour."
The move is "nothing I'm taking lightly," says Maupin. "It's been 41 years since I landed here and it gave me my story. ... I keep reminding myself that Barbary Lane is portable and everything I learned here became part of me and is something I'll always have."
He and Turner are "both craving a little more space and some nature," he said, and the move is "giving us new dreams. There's nothing wrong with that."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/19/DDCN1P4DG2.DTL
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Obama's Gay Marriage Evolution: A Societal Shift?
May 12, 2012
As the debate over the political calculations behind President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage continue, Host Scott Simon checks in with acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Armistead Maupin to talk about this as a cultural moment.
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/12/152561155/obamas-gay-marriage-evolution-a-societal-shift
Friday, March 30, 2012
World of Armistead Maupin, novelist
The Tales of the City author talks to Melissa Whitworth about starting out, coming out and a note from Gandalf.
By Melissa Whitworth 4:32PM BST 30 Mar 2012
Armistead Maupin, 67, is the author of eight novels in the Tales of the City series, of which there are six million copies in print. The series began as a column in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976 and has gone on to become a television mini–series, a film and a musical. The novels are all now available as ebooks. A ninth instalment, The Days of Anna Madrigal, will be published next year. Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner, their labradoodle, Philo, and their cat, Maxine.
Mornings I get up at about nine o'clock; usually my husband and I spend a few minutes in bed with the animals before we open the curtains. The dog and the cat both like to crawl on and snuggle. We have a similar ritual just before bed, so that gives you a pretty good idea of how much we care about our creatures. The dog is named after the Greek root for love; he looks like a Muppet.
Writing My office is an eyrie at the top of the house. There's a lovely view of the eucalyptus forests out of one window, and we can look out across the bay towards Sausalito from the other. I work when my energy is high, in the morning. But the sunshine pours into this room and it makes me want to curl up like a cat.
Childhood I made every effort to become a lawyer because that's what my father wanted. But it was clear from the beginning that my instincts didn't lie in that direction. I was by nature a storyteller. When I was eight years old I would make my friends sit around the campfire and listen to ghost stories. It was how I found self–worth because I was so rotten at sports.
Starting out Tales of the City began as a failed effort to write a news story for a little newspaper about the heterosexual cruising scene at a local supermarket. I couldn't find anyone who would actually tell the truth about why she was there, so I made up a character called Mary Ann Singleton. Then the newspaper folded so I took the idea to the San Francisco Chronicle. The serial, now fiction, appeared five days a week and I had to come up with 800 words of a continuing story every day, no matter what, for two years. It was a pretty harrowing but exhilarating experience. Now Tales of the City is like a ball of sourdough starter I keep in the back room of my mind. I can use it to bake new bread whenever I want. Its DNA is always there, ready to generate new stories.
On the wall There's a painting of Christopher (pictured) by Don Bachardy, who was Christopher Isherwood's partner for many years. Don is still a very close friend. He was 30 years younger than Chris [Isherwood]. My Chris and I have a similar age gap, so their relationship has always been an inspiration. In my office loo I have a framed newspaper rack card from 30 years ago (pictured), announcing the return of Tales of the City. I think most self–promotional items should be in the loo – a certain amount of modesty is required.
Coming out I came out of the closet while writing the series. And what a revelation to realise that the thing that I had feared the most had become the source of my greatest inspiration and the cause of my success. My mother said to me, 'I don't mind you being honest, darling, I just don't want it to hurt your career.' I said, 'You don't understand, this is my career.' I knew very early in the game that my responsibility was to be publicly, openly, happily gay. That wasn't hard to do. I don't suffer closeted folks gladly. I let them know, especially if they're famous, that I think they have a responsibility. Years ago my friend Ian McKellen asked me how I felt about it and he told me that the evening he spent talking to me was what pushed him over the edge. I'm really proud of that.
Gandalf When Ian stayed here on one occasion, he left this note (pictured) on his bed. It says 'Gandalf slept here' – and, in parentheses, 'with Magneto! [McKellen's character in X–Men]' It's a little drawing of Gandalf lying on his back in the bed, smoking a pipe.
Lucky charm I have a brass Chinese dragon that I bought in the Chinese section of Saigon when I was stationed in the military there during the Vietnam War. I kept it by my radio in my bunker on the Cambodian border as a good luck charm.
In demand Readers see my characters as members of their own family. It makes me very happy to know that they matter to people so much, and have provided guidance for people I'll never even meet. Some fans can get quite proprietorial. I recently went into Facebook silence because I needed to write a novel. When I showed up on Facebook a week later people would post messages saying, 'Shouldn't you be writing?' To know that you are in demand is a lovely thing.
Award A crystal obelisk was given to me by the Trevor Project, the heroic organisation that helps suicidal LBGT [lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender] kids. There are a lot of them in the States at the moment with the homophobia being spewed by preachers and politicians. Children need to be told their life is worth something. I was given this award about 10 years ago. It just says 'for his efforts in saving young lives'. I think they meant that my work contributed to the spirit of LBGT self–acceptance and that makes me happy.
Coats of arms Chris and I have our coats of arms (pictured) framed side by side, in the wedding manner. We got them on a lark in Drumnadrochit, the village on Loch Ness where the monster is the chief tourist attraction. The poor lady who took our heraldic information didn't quite grasp the idea that it was our marriage that we were celebrating. Looking at the coats of arms she said, 'Which one is the bride?' We said, 'Neither of us, actually.'
Sexuality I have been conscious of being part of a cultural revolution for the past 35 years. There's no question that it's easier in some ways because gay folks aren't invisible any more. When I was young, many of us thought we were the only gay in the village. Now, because of that visibility, there's a much more concerted campaign against gay people, especially from the fundamentalist segments of America, and that means the pressure is much worse. Still, the polls now indicate that most Americans support the right for people to marry the person that they love. The battle hasn't been won yet, but we're close.
Relaxing I do enjoy a joint at night. I use something called a vaporiser, which removes the smoke from the cannabis. It's much better on your lungs. Lately I've been smoking something called Blue Dream. There are so many varieties these days, it's like wines, with similarly pretentious descriptions.
Viewing I spend the evening watching television with Christopher. Probably half of Britain will cringe to hear this but we love Downton Abbey. We giggle at the absurdity of all those people standing around dressed to the nines. But there's something oddly comforting about it. I'd rather wait for Maggie Smith's gowns than J–Lo's.
Love My life is full of love; I designed it that way. I try to make my own experience about love and I look for kindness and tenderness in others. That's what I've found in Christopher. That's the thing I value the most: it will get you through everything.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9157791/World-of-Armistead-Maupin-novelist.html
By Melissa Whitworth 4:32PM BST 30 Mar 2012
Armistead Maupin, 67, is the author of eight novels in the Tales of the City series, of which there are six million copies in print. The series began as a column in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976 and has gone on to become a television mini–series, a film and a musical. The novels are all now available as ebooks. A ninth instalment, The Days of Anna Madrigal, will be published next year. Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner, their labradoodle, Philo, and their cat, Maxine.
Mornings I get up at about nine o'clock; usually my husband and I spend a few minutes in bed with the animals before we open the curtains. The dog and the cat both like to crawl on and snuggle. We have a similar ritual just before bed, so that gives you a pretty good idea of how much we care about our creatures. The dog is named after the Greek root for love; he looks like a Muppet.
Writing My office is an eyrie at the top of the house. There's a lovely view of the eucalyptus forests out of one window, and we can look out across the bay towards Sausalito from the other. I work when my energy is high, in the morning. But the sunshine pours into this room and it makes me want to curl up like a cat.
Childhood I made every effort to become a lawyer because that's what my father wanted. But it was clear from the beginning that my instincts didn't lie in that direction. I was by nature a storyteller. When I was eight years old I would make my friends sit around the campfire and listen to ghost stories. It was how I found self–worth because I was so rotten at sports.
Starting out Tales of the City began as a failed effort to write a news story for a little newspaper about the heterosexual cruising scene at a local supermarket. I couldn't find anyone who would actually tell the truth about why she was there, so I made up a character called Mary Ann Singleton. Then the newspaper folded so I took the idea to the San Francisco Chronicle. The serial, now fiction, appeared five days a week and I had to come up with 800 words of a continuing story every day, no matter what, for two years. It was a pretty harrowing but exhilarating experience. Now Tales of the City is like a ball of sourdough starter I keep in the back room of my mind. I can use it to bake new bread whenever I want. Its DNA is always there, ready to generate new stories.
On the wall There's a painting of Christopher (pictured) by Don Bachardy, who was Christopher Isherwood's partner for many years. Don is still a very close friend. He was 30 years younger than Chris [Isherwood]. My Chris and I have a similar age gap, so their relationship has always been an inspiration. In my office loo I have a framed newspaper rack card from 30 years ago (pictured), announcing the return of Tales of the City. I think most self–promotional items should be in the loo – a certain amount of modesty is required.
Coming out I came out of the closet while writing the series. And what a revelation to realise that the thing that I had feared the most had become the source of my greatest inspiration and the cause of my success. My mother said to me, 'I don't mind you being honest, darling, I just don't want it to hurt your career.' I said, 'You don't understand, this is my career.' I knew very early in the game that my responsibility was to be publicly, openly, happily gay. That wasn't hard to do. I don't suffer closeted folks gladly. I let them know, especially if they're famous, that I think they have a responsibility. Years ago my friend Ian McKellen asked me how I felt about it and he told me that the evening he spent talking to me was what pushed him over the edge. I'm really proud of that.
Gandalf When Ian stayed here on one occasion, he left this note (pictured) on his bed. It says 'Gandalf slept here' – and, in parentheses, 'with Magneto! [McKellen's character in X–Men]' It's a little drawing of Gandalf lying on his back in the bed, smoking a pipe.
Lucky charm I have a brass Chinese dragon that I bought in the Chinese section of Saigon when I was stationed in the military there during the Vietnam War. I kept it by my radio in my bunker on the Cambodian border as a good luck charm.
In demand Readers see my characters as members of their own family. It makes me very happy to know that they matter to people so much, and have provided guidance for people I'll never even meet. Some fans can get quite proprietorial. I recently went into Facebook silence because I needed to write a novel. When I showed up on Facebook a week later people would post messages saying, 'Shouldn't you be writing?' To know that you are in demand is a lovely thing.
Award A crystal obelisk was given to me by the Trevor Project, the heroic organisation that helps suicidal LBGT [lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender] kids. There are a lot of them in the States at the moment with the homophobia being spewed by preachers and politicians. Children need to be told their life is worth something. I was given this award about 10 years ago. It just says 'for his efforts in saving young lives'. I think they meant that my work contributed to the spirit of LBGT self–acceptance and that makes me happy.
Coats of arms Chris and I have our coats of arms (pictured) framed side by side, in the wedding manner. We got them on a lark in Drumnadrochit, the village on Loch Ness where the monster is the chief tourist attraction. The poor lady who took our heraldic information didn't quite grasp the idea that it was our marriage that we were celebrating. Looking at the coats of arms she said, 'Which one is the bride?' We said, 'Neither of us, actually.'
Sexuality I have been conscious of being part of a cultural revolution for the past 35 years. There's no question that it's easier in some ways because gay folks aren't invisible any more. When I was young, many of us thought we were the only gay in the village. Now, because of that visibility, there's a much more concerted campaign against gay people, especially from the fundamentalist segments of America, and that means the pressure is much worse. Still, the polls now indicate that most Americans support the right for people to marry the person that they love. The battle hasn't been won yet, but we're close.
Relaxing I do enjoy a joint at night. I use something called a vaporiser, which removes the smoke from the cannabis. It's much better on your lungs. Lately I've been smoking something called Blue Dream. There are so many varieties these days, it's like wines, with similarly pretentious descriptions.
Viewing I spend the evening watching television with Christopher. Probably half of Britain will cringe to hear this but we love Downton Abbey. We giggle at the absurdity of all those people standing around dressed to the nines. But there's something oddly comforting about it. I'd rather wait for Maggie Smith's gowns than J–Lo's.
Love My life is full of love; I designed it that way. I try to make my own experience about love and I look for kindness and tenderness in others. That's what I've found in Christopher. That's the thing I value the most: it will get you through everything.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9157791/World-of-Armistead-Maupin-novelist.html
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Interview: Armistead Maupin on Tales of The City, Ian McKellen and Rock Hudson
by Laurence Watts
15 February 2012, 11:13am
His ‘Tales of The City’ series has sold more than 6m copies, been translated into ten languages, spawned three television miniseries and most recently a musical, the score for which was composed by Jake Shears and John Garden. He also wrote the critically acclaimed The Night Listener, which was made into a film starring Robin Williams. Laurence Watts travelled to San Francisco to meet Armistead Maupin.
For a man whose writing gave hope to hundreds of thousands struggling with their sexuality, Armistead Maupin was in denial about his own up until about the age of 26. He didn’t come out until he was 30. Before becoming a writer he served in the US Navy.
“It took San Francisco for me to accept and celebrate who I was,” he tells me. “I’m cross with myself that it took so long. I’m grateful that my life’s work has enabled me to address that fear for others in a big way. In the Navy, I was completely hidden. I would pick up guys down on The Battery, in Charleston, and once, I came down with a bad case of crabs and didn’t know what they were. I was so afraid that a doctor might be able to distinguish between gay crabs and straight crabs that I didn’t get anywhere near the infirmary.”
Before writing fiction, Maupin was initially a journalist for a local Charleston newspaper. He later moved to the West Coast to take up a job with the Associated Press’ San Francisco bureau.
“I started to write serially almost by accident,” he explains. “I wrote a single piece about the hetero pick up scene down at the Marina Safeway for the Pacific Sun. I couldn’t make it a true journalistic piece because I couldn’t find anyone that would confess to being at a supermarket to get laid. So I made up a fictitious new-girl-in-town called Mary Ann Singleton. The editor suggested I follow her, so I did and I not only followed her, but also followed the gay man she’d tried to pick up. It grew out of that, over five episodes, until that paper folded. Then the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle invited me in to pitch the story to him. He ended up asking if I write it for them, five days a week. I lied through my teeth and said I could.”
Maupin is often mentioned in the same breath as Charles Dickens for the simple fact that both writers’ works appeared as columns in periodicals before they were published in book form.
“They wanted six weeks of columns before they would commence,” he says, “so I kept the gay character, Michael, very low key at the beginning because I knew they’d say no if they saw what I was up to. It was once I had a readership, and hence a fair amount of control, that I started bringing the gay characters in. I loved the desperation of writing under pressure. The story took turns that I didn’t expect at all. I don’t work that way now because I’m a terrible perfectionist and a terrible procrastinator. I’ll get a page or two out on a good day.”
For many readers in Britain and America, Maupin’s Tales of The City books marked the first time they came across gay characters portrayed as normal people.
“I think they were,” Maupin says. “I hate to sound immodest about it, but there weren’t many examples before that. Even the great gay writers at the time like Capote, Vidal and Baldwin were presenting an image of homosexuality that was ultimately quite bleak. But I was here in San Francisco, filled with the joy of the town and with the acceptance I felt not just from gay people, but also straight San Franciscans. That rubbed off in the work and found its way to other people.”
I pick up on his mention of the phrase ‘gay writers.’ Prior to our interview I’d read that he objected to being called a ‘gay writer.’ He clarifies this for me.
“I don’t write gay books, but I am a gay writer,” he explains. “I practically invented the label. When I started writing, Truman Capote was still equating his homosexuality with his alcoholism and Gore Vidal claimed there were homosexual acts, but not homosexual people. I came out in the course of writing Tales of The City and realised that part of my function was to be very clear and very public as a gay man. I’m prouder of that than anything I’ve else done. But as soon as you let an industry say that you are publishing a ‘gay this’ or a ‘gay that’, they keep you safely segregated from the rest of society. I did not want my work to be stuck at the back of a bookstore on a shelf that could be hidden from children. That’s the only point I was ever trying to make.”
Armistead Maupin is regarded as the first author to write about the eighties’ AIDS pandemic in a fictional context, which he did with 1984’s ‘Babycakes’. ‘Sure of You’, his sixth Tales of The City book was published five years later in 1989. Maupin then took an 18-year hiatus from the series before publishing a follow-up, ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’, in 2007.
“I stopped because I was ready to stop,” he explains. “E.F. Benson wrote six ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels, which had been something of an inspiration. I felt that six was a nice round number. I’d established that Michael was HIV positive and I didn’t want this to be one more story where the gay man dies at the end. In 1989, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion. It’s no accident that when I revived the series the next book was called ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’. In the period in between I produced and part-wrote the Tales of The City miniseries and wrote Maybe The Moon and The Night Listener, which I think is probably the best thing I’ve ever written.”
“With ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’ I wanted to write a novel about my generation; about gay men who had survived this holocaust and were still here and who were, as I put it in the book, facing mortality the ordinary way. I wanted to celebrate that generation because we went through a certain kind of hell that’s not fully appreciated today. Young people nowadays just aren’t aware. It’s not their fault. Every generation, suffers from this kind of amnesia. That’s why we keep having wars.”
Tales of The City was introduced to a whole new generation when the first three books were made into three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. They were broadcast respectively in 1994, 1998 and 2001.
“One of the happiest days of my life,” says Maupin, “was when I walked on to the set at Occidental Studios and saw the three-storey house that had been built to accommodate the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. I could wander though my own creation and look at everybody’s rooms and realise whose room each was simply by what was in it.”
A further interpretation of Maupin’s work debuted in 2011 when a Tales of The City musical had its world-premiere. The Scissor Sister’s Jake Shears co-wrote the music for the show.
“I’d heard Filthy/Gorgeous before and thought it was catchy,” says Maupin, “but I didn’t know much about the band beyond that. The person who sold me on them was our librettist, Jeff Whitty who wrote Avenue Q. He knew Jake well. The musical premiered here in San Francisco at the American Conservatory and broke all records for the theater. It was the most successful show they’d had in 40 years. I’m hoping it’ll open at some point in London’s West End. I think it would do well there.”
Interestingly, Maupin and Shears share a fondness for Britain. While the Scissor Sisters play and fill venues like London’s Wembley Stadium there, many in America still haven’t heard of them. Similarly, Maupin’s early success occurred in Britain and he admits that New York took a long time to acknowledge what he was doing. Since it’s on subject, I ask Armistead about his friendship with one of Britain’s most famous knights, Sir Ian McKellen.
“I think Wikipedia still says that we were once lovers!” Armistead laughs. “I must get that changed. We’ve always been the dearest friends. I first met him when he was passing through San Francisco, having just made a movie in New Mexico with Ava Gardner about DH Lawrence. We had a mutual friend who’d said he thought we’d get-on. Back then I could walk around the Castro with Ian and introduce him as my friend and there was no element of recognition at all. Now when he comes to town 14-year old African American girls chase him screaming down the street!”
“Ian once said that a night he spent with me and my ex here in 1988 was the thing that persuaded him to come out. He asked us if we thought he should be out of the closet and we said yes and told him why: we thought he’d be a happier man and a stronger artist if he was.”
Maupin was famously friends with another Hollywood actor, the late Rock Hudson, whom he subtly referenced in his third Tales of The City book. Though Hudson’s homosexuality was one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets, he never discussed it publicly. Maupin was introduced to Hudson through a mutual circle of friends.
“In 1976, just before my columns started, Rock invited about ten guys up to his suite at the Fairmont Hotel, just to hang out. I told him that this story I was writing was going to be in the paper the next day and he went down to the desk clerk at midnight and got what they called the bulldog edition. When he came back he stood up, drunkenly, in front of all of my friends and said, “I have a little reading I’d like to do,” and read out loud the first chapter of Tales of The City. It was one of the more bizarre and glorious moments of my life. Afterwards he put the moves on me. We became buddies and occasional playmates, but it was never an affair or a romance.”
When, in July 1985, Hudson shocked the world by announcing that he was dying of AIDS, he became the first high profile casualty of what was then a greatly misunderstood disease.
“He was the first person with AIDS to get any attention in the national press and unfortunately he was surrounded by these very old-fashioned closet-cases whose instinct was either to lie or not answer questions. I spoke to the press when his diagnosis was announced and presented him as a good man that was well known to be gay in Hollywood. I did so in an un-hysterical and loving way, basically challenging people not to try to make a scandal out of it.”
As a final question, I ask Armistead what he makes of the ongoing fight for equality in America. The LGBT community has come a long way in his lifetime, but there still remain important battles to be won. Now 67, he tells me he has tired of the argument, though he remains passionate about his viewpoint.
“I’m outraged that there are currently major candidates for President of the United States who are using homophobia to rally their base,” he says. “I’m pissed off at my Republican family back in North Carolina, several of whom came to my wedding, but who went right back and are voting for homophobes and acting like it doesn’t matter. It does matter and it’s time for the queers in this country to start saying so to their families. I think we’ve all cut them too much slack for far too long.”
Armistead Maupin’s Tales of The City novels are being serially re-released as eBooks, with the full eight books available from March 13 2012.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/02/15/interview-armistead-maupin-on-tales-of-the-city-ian-mckellen-and-rock-hudson/
15 February 2012, 11:13am
His ‘Tales of The City’ series has sold more than 6m copies, been translated into ten languages, spawned three television miniseries and most recently a musical, the score for which was composed by Jake Shears and John Garden. He also wrote the critically acclaimed The Night Listener, which was made into a film starring Robin Williams. Laurence Watts travelled to San Francisco to meet Armistead Maupin.
For a man whose writing gave hope to hundreds of thousands struggling with their sexuality, Armistead Maupin was in denial about his own up until about the age of 26. He didn’t come out until he was 30. Before becoming a writer he served in the US Navy.
“It took San Francisco for me to accept and celebrate who I was,” he tells me. “I’m cross with myself that it took so long. I’m grateful that my life’s work has enabled me to address that fear for others in a big way. In the Navy, I was completely hidden. I would pick up guys down on The Battery, in Charleston, and once, I came down with a bad case of crabs and didn’t know what they were. I was so afraid that a doctor might be able to distinguish between gay crabs and straight crabs that I didn’t get anywhere near the infirmary.”
Before writing fiction, Maupin was initially a journalist for a local Charleston newspaper. He later moved to the West Coast to take up a job with the Associated Press’ San Francisco bureau.
“I started to write serially almost by accident,” he explains. “I wrote a single piece about the hetero pick up scene down at the Marina Safeway for the Pacific Sun. I couldn’t make it a true journalistic piece because I couldn’t find anyone that would confess to being at a supermarket to get laid. So I made up a fictitious new-girl-in-town called Mary Ann Singleton. The editor suggested I follow her, so I did and I not only followed her, but also followed the gay man she’d tried to pick up. It grew out of that, over five episodes, until that paper folded. Then the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle invited me in to pitch the story to him. He ended up asking if I write it for them, five days a week. I lied through my teeth and said I could.”
Maupin is often mentioned in the same breath as Charles Dickens for the simple fact that both writers’ works appeared as columns in periodicals before they were published in book form.
“They wanted six weeks of columns before they would commence,” he says, “so I kept the gay character, Michael, very low key at the beginning because I knew they’d say no if they saw what I was up to. It was once I had a readership, and hence a fair amount of control, that I started bringing the gay characters in. I loved the desperation of writing under pressure. The story took turns that I didn’t expect at all. I don’t work that way now because I’m a terrible perfectionist and a terrible procrastinator. I’ll get a page or two out on a good day.”
For many readers in Britain and America, Maupin’s Tales of The City books marked the first time they came across gay characters portrayed as normal people.
“I think they were,” Maupin says. “I hate to sound immodest about it, but there weren’t many examples before that. Even the great gay writers at the time like Capote, Vidal and Baldwin were presenting an image of homosexuality that was ultimately quite bleak. But I was here in San Francisco, filled with the joy of the town and with the acceptance I felt not just from gay people, but also straight San Franciscans. That rubbed off in the work and found its way to other people.”
I pick up on his mention of the phrase ‘gay writers.’ Prior to our interview I’d read that he objected to being called a ‘gay writer.’ He clarifies this for me.
“I don’t write gay books, but I am a gay writer,” he explains. “I practically invented the label. When I started writing, Truman Capote was still equating his homosexuality with his alcoholism and Gore Vidal claimed there were homosexual acts, but not homosexual people. I came out in the course of writing Tales of The City and realised that part of my function was to be very clear and very public as a gay man. I’m prouder of that than anything I’ve else done. But as soon as you let an industry say that you are publishing a ‘gay this’ or a ‘gay that’, they keep you safely segregated from the rest of society. I did not want my work to be stuck at the back of a bookstore on a shelf that could be hidden from children. That’s the only point I was ever trying to make.”
Armistead Maupin is regarded as the first author to write about the eighties’ AIDS pandemic in a fictional context, which he did with 1984’s ‘Babycakes’. ‘Sure of You’, his sixth Tales of The City book was published five years later in 1989. Maupin then took an 18-year hiatus from the series before publishing a follow-up, ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’, in 2007.
“I stopped because I was ready to stop,” he explains. “E.F. Benson wrote six ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels, which had been something of an inspiration. I felt that six was a nice round number. I’d established that Michael was HIV positive and I didn’t want this to be one more story where the gay man dies at the end. In 1989, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion. It’s no accident that when I revived the series the next book was called ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’. In the period in between I produced and part-wrote the Tales of The City miniseries and wrote Maybe The Moon and The Night Listener, which I think is probably the best thing I’ve ever written.”
“With ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’ I wanted to write a novel about my generation; about gay men who had survived this holocaust and were still here and who were, as I put it in the book, facing mortality the ordinary way. I wanted to celebrate that generation because we went through a certain kind of hell that’s not fully appreciated today. Young people nowadays just aren’t aware. It’s not their fault. Every generation, suffers from this kind of amnesia. That’s why we keep having wars.”
Tales of The City was introduced to a whole new generation when the first three books were made into three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. They were broadcast respectively in 1994, 1998 and 2001.
“One of the happiest days of my life,” says Maupin, “was when I walked on to the set at Occidental Studios and saw the three-storey house that had been built to accommodate the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. I could wander though my own creation and look at everybody’s rooms and realise whose room each was simply by what was in it.”
A further interpretation of Maupin’s work debuted in 2011 when a Tales of The City musical had its world-premiere. The Scissor Sister’s Jake Shears co-wrote the music for the show.
“I’d heard Filthy/Gorgeous before and thought it was catchy,” says Maupin, “but I didn’t know much about the band beyond that. The person who sold me on them was our librettist, Jeff Whitty who wrote Avenue Q. He knew Jake well. The musical premiered here in San Francisco at the American Conservatory and broke all records for the theater. It was the most successful show they’d had in 40 years. I’m hoping it’ll open at some point in London’s West End. I think it would do well there.”
Interestingly, Maupin and Shears share a fondness for Britain. While the Scissor Sisters play and fill venues like London’s Wembley Stadium there, many in America still haven’t heard of them. Similarly, Maupin’s early success occurred in Britain and he admits that New York took a long time to acknowledge what he was doing. Since it’s on subject, I ask Armistead about his friendship with one of Britain’s most famous knights, Sir Ian McKellen.
“I think Wikipedia still says that we were once lovers!” Armistead laughs. “I must get that changed. We’ve always been the dearest friends. I first met him when he was passing through San Francisco, having just made a movie in New Mexico with Ava Gardner about DH Lawrence. We had a mutual friend who’d said he thought we’d get-on. Back then I could walk around the Castro with Ian and introduce him as my friend and there was no element of recognition at all. Now when he comes to town 14-year old African American girls chase him screaming down the street!”
“Ian once said that a night he spent with me and my ex here in 1988 was the thing that persuaded him to come out. He asked us if we thought he should be out of the closet and we said yes and told him why: we thought he’d be a happier man and a stronger artist if he was.”
Maupin was famously friends with another Hollywood actor, the late Rock Hudson, whom he subtly referenced in his third Tales of The City book. Though Hudson’s homosexuality was one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets, he never discussed it publicly. Maupin was introduced to Hudson through a mutual circle of friends.
“In 1976, just before my columns started, Rock invited about ten guys up to his suite at the Fairmont Hotel, just to hang out. I told him that this story I was writing was going to be in the paper the next day and he went down to the desk clerk at midnight and got what they called the bulldog edition. When he came back he stood up, drunkenly, in front of all of my friends and said, “I have a little reading I’d like to do,” and read out loud the first chapter of Tales of The City. It was one of the more bizarre and glorious moments of my life. Afterwards he put the moves on me. We became buddies and occasional playmates, but it was never an affair or a romance.”
When, in July 1985, Hudson shocked the world by announcing that he was dying of AIDS, he became the first high profile casualty of what was then a greatly misunderstood disease.
“He was the first person with AIDS to get any attention in the national press and unfortunately he was surrounded by these very old-fashioned closet-cases whose instinct was either to lie or not answer questions. I spoke to the press when his diagnosis was announced and presented him as a good man that was well known to be gay in Hollywood. I did so in an un-hysterical and loving way, basically challenging people not to try to make a scandal out of it.”
As a final question, I ask Armistead what he makes of the ongoing fight for equality in America. The LGBT community has come a long way in his lifetime, but there still remain important battles to be won. Now 67, he tells me he has tired of the argument, though he remains passionate about his viewpoint.
“I’m outraged that there are currently major candidates for President of the United States who are using homophobia to rally their base,” he says. “I’m pissed off at my Republican family back in North Carolina, several of whom came to my wedding, but who went right back and are voting for homophobes and acting like it doesn’t matter. It does matter and it’s time for the queers in this country to start saying so to their families. I think we’ve all cut them too much slack for far too long.”
Armistead Maupin’s Tales of The City novels are being serially re-released as eBooks, with the full eight books available from March 13 2012.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/02/15/interview-armistead-maupin-on-tales-of-the-city-ian-mckellen-and-rock-hudson/
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Eye On The Bay: Summer Entertainment 2011 – 6/29/11
Liam Mayclem
June 29, 2011 4:09 PM
TONIGHT we have our eye on entertainment. Meet the stars behind this summer’s Bay area produced movies, music and stage shows.
Up close with writer Armistead Maupin, the man behind Tales of the City. His words have been lifted from the page to the stage and is now a sell out musical at A.C.T. in San Francisco.
Enjoy soul food lunch with Grammy nominated Ledisi at Brown Sugar Kitchen, Oakland.
The talented lads of Billy Elliott yes, all five Billys join Liam for Tacos at Tacolicious at the ferry Plaza Farmers Market, San Francisco.
And Liam does a little shoe shuffle with Wolverine – Hugh Jackman.
See the video here.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/06/29/eye-on-the-bay-summer-entertainment-2011/
June 29, 2011 4:09 PM
TONIGHT we have our eye on entertainment. Meet the stars behind this summer’s Bay area produced movies, music and stage shows.
Up close with writer Armistead Maupin, the man behind Tales of the City. His words have been lifted from the page to the stage and is now a sell out musical at A.C.T. in San Francisco.
Enjoy soul food lunch with Grammy nominated Ledisi at Brown Sugar Kitchen, Oakland.
The talented lads of Billy Elliott yes, all five Billys join Liam for Tacos at Tacolicious at the ferry Plaza Farmers Market, San Francisco.
And Liam does a little shoe shuffle with Wolverine – Hugh Jackman.
See the video here.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/06/29/eye-on-the-bay-summer-entertainment-2011/
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Video: Armistead Maupin On Pride
By Frequencies Citizen Reporter Brigade
June 26, 2011 6 a.m. |In Literature
With Pride coming up this weekend, we're capping Pride Month off with an interview with Armistead Maupin, author of “Tales of the City.” The book has long been ensconced in the gay literary canon and was recently turned into a musical by the American Conservatory Theater.
We caught up with Maupin at the theater on Geary Street, and he shared his first memories of the city and how he came to chronicle gay San Francisco.
“Tales” (as it’s affectionately referred to by fans) was first published in 1978, and its overarching theme is that of misfits trying to break free of societal constraints. San Francisco is the safe haven that beckons them. It's one of those books that fans feel a cultish ownership over and has been reissued over and over again.
Of course, gay culture is an important part of Maupin’s writing. Tales of gay characters grappling with homophobia, coming out to their parents and finding true love abound. Today, those subjects are common fodder for made-for-TV movies and Oprah, but when "Tales" was released, Maupin was considered brave.
“I cringe a little at that,” Maupin tells us in the video. “Because honestly, what I realized was that I was onto something really big."
The video was produced as part of a partnership between the American Conservancy Theater and the Bay Citizen's Citizen Reporter program. As such, this video was edited by Citizen Reporter (and Bay Citizen summer intern) Erik Verduzco.
If you want to check out the musical, the A.C.T. is offering a discount for Bay Citizen readers. Get 40 percent off of orchestra and mezzanine tickets by using the code CITIZEN online, or call 415-749-2228.
http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/frequencies/armistead-maupin-pride-tales-city/comments/#comments
June 26, 2011 6 a.m. |In Literature
With Pride coming up this weekend, we're capping Pride Month off with an interview with Armistead Maupin, author of “Tales of the City.” The book has long been ensconced in the gay literary canon and was recently turned into a musical by the American Conservatory Theater.
We caught up with Maupin at the theater on Geary Street, and he shared his first memories of the city and how he came to chronicle gay San Francisco.
“Tales” (as it’s affectionately referred to by fans) was first published in 1978, and its overarching theme is that of misfits trying to break free of societal constraints. San Francisco is the safe haven that beckons them. It's one of those books that fans feel a cultish ownership over and has been reissued over and over again.
Of course, gay culture is an important part of Maupin’s writing. Tales of gay characters grappling with homophobia, coming out to their parents and finding true love abound. Today, those subjects are common fodder for made-for-TV movies and Oprah, but when "Tales" was released, Maupin was considered brave.
“I cringe a little at that,” Maupin tells us in the video. “Because honestly, what I realized was that I was onto something really big."
The video was produced as part of a partnership between the American Conservancy Theater and the Bay Citizen's Citizen Reporter program. As such, this video was edited by Citizen Reporter (and Bay Citizen summer intern) Erik Verduzco.
If you want to check out the musical, the A.C.T. is offering a discount for Bay Citizen readers. Get 40 percent off of orchestra and mezzanine tickets by using the code CITIZEN online, or call 415-749-2228.
http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/frequencies/armistead-maupin-pride-tales-city/comments/#comments
Monday, June 27, 2011
EXCLUSIVE interview: Armistead Maupin for SGN
By Miryam Gordon, SGN A&E Writer
Seattle Pride was graced this year by the inclusion of a special Grand Marshall: San Francisco's favorite Gay writer Armistead Maupin. The irreverent and frank Maupin gave an intimate talk on Saturday to lucky patrons at the Seattle Public Library (focusing on his brand new book Mary Ann in Autumn) and a keynote speech to the throngs at Seattle Center after the Pride Parade made it way there, Sunday afternoon.
Maupin reported to SGN (prior to arriving), 'When the invitation came to participate in Seattle Pride I jumped at the opportunity. I'm happy I'm speaking at both places because the library appearance can be more intimate and leisurely. Pride will be more festive and it's too different types of speaking talking to a large crowd in a park and in an auditorium and I enjoy both types.'
Maupin spoke about the 35 year span of writing his now eight-book opus Tales of the City, the brand-spanking-new musical based on it that opened in June at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco to huge box office and at least three extensions in the run, and a bit about the current look of politics and California's Prop 8 ban on Gay marriage.
You might not know that one of Maupin's characters, Mona Ramsey, moved to Seattle for a few chapters, at one point. Maupin's been here a number of times and has great affection for the city. He said, 'I have wandered all over the place in literary fashion, sometimes to places I know quite well. Some of the places I've written about in Tales have been places I went on vacation.
'I wanted to be able to call myself a Lesbian, so I went to the Island of Lesbos. I ended up living in a little village called Molyvos which is the family seat of the Dukakis family, and this was before five years before we hired Olympia Dukakis as Mrs. Madrigal. I didn't know at the time (that I would have a connection with the Dukakis family).'
Asked if he could see writing about living in Seattle, he chuckled, 'I'd never want to fake it about Seattle because I'd get called on it immediately.'
Maupin is clearly thrilled about the success of his new musical even though he said he's 'only a sort of senior advisor.' The people behind the musical are book writer Jeff Whitty, the Tony Award-winning book writer for Avenue Q, and music and lyrics by Jason Sellards (AKA Jake Shears) and John Garden (JJ) of the disco and glam rock-inspired pop group Scissor Sisters. Jason Moore (Avenue Q and Shrek) directed.
He said, 'It was very bold of A.C.T. to take it on. It's a $2.5 million production! But the public is really turning out. We've had a lot of people seeing the show two and three times now and there's a high percentage of out-of-town audience members. It makes for a very good feeling in the audience. It's almost interactive. I've seen the finished production nine times now, but I've been watching it develop in workshops for the past five years.'
Musicals are particularly difficult to get right and usually take a number of years to fully ripen. Maupin agreed, 'You don't know what you got until you see it in front of an audience, so there are a lot of incarnations. The creators are amazing guys who know how to throw things out and put things in and not be too vain. It's been an impressive thing to watch. The show runs a little under three hours and it was 40 minutes longer than that during previews. They had to perform a kind of surgery on it to make it shorter.'
And were there some great songs that got cut? He said, 'I could probably sing some ballads I really loved, but they weren't moving the story forward and they had to go. Some were replaced by even better songs.'
Of course there are hopes and possibilities for the musical to play elsewhere, but Maupin said, 'I have a private fantasy that it could go to the West End in London because I think they would get it. I have no idea what's coming up next, but the success might be very encouraging for people who want to produce it elsewhere. The story has worked as a miniseries and a book, and it's universally true, about a bunch of people who are trying to find love and security and home.'
The musical focuses on the era of Maupin's first two books in the series, the pre-AIDS time of 1976 and '77. The big focus was singer and 'orange juice queen' Anita Bryant's anti-Gay screed from Florida. Maupin chose to come out in response to that, as did many others, and he said, 'The sad thing is that a lot of GLBT people don't take action until someone says something ugly about them and then we rise to our own defense. Much like young people today are responding to hate groups like the National Organization for Marriage.
'My husband (Christopher Turner) and I were among the 18,000 couples who were legally married (in California) before Prop 8 banned marriage. They can't take that away from us. We file taxes as a couple. We can't file on the federal level. But the rest of the GLBT people in California have that right taken away. It infuriates me that I have to pay (federal) taxes and I'm not allowed the same rights as my straight brother and sister.
'Half the money given to Prop 8 was from the Mormon Church, which is one of the last institutions that should be passing judgment on marital institutions. The side in support of marriage equality was far too timid and should have been quite clear on a personal level (about) what it meant to millions of Californians.'
Maupin is clear that he is not a huge fan of Democrats over Republicans, necessarily. 'I don't look at any party of being our savior. If it had been up to elected people to make progress we wouldn't have made any at all.'
But he does, of course, feel strongly about the way Republicans have used homophobia to gain political advantage. 'Republicans have a real dilemma on their hands because they've used homophobia to get elected and they're not going to be able to do that much longer. The American public is less and less willing to demonize Gay people. There are still a few pockets in the south where they can play on suspicion and hatred, but most people have openly Gay people as family and friends these days and that's made all the difference.'
And he's glad to see a positive focus in the 'It Gets Better' campaign, started by Dan Savage. 'Dan Savage was brilliant, insofar as he appealed to our better instincts, pointing out our responsibility to lend a hand to young people who are suffering.
'For some reason we have to keep delivering this to every generation. I find that terribly frustrating. There's a song in the musical based on my own coming out letter to my own parents and essentially (the character) says that you're the ones who made me the way I am, so thank you because it's the light and joy of my life. That's my way of saying it gets better - 35 years ago.'
http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews39_25/page43.cfm
Seattle Pride was graced this year by the inclusion of a special Grand Marshall: San Francisco's favorite Gay writer Armistead Maupin. The irreverent and frank Maupin gave an intimate talk on Saturday to lucky patrons at the Seattle Public Library (focusing on his brand new book Mary Ann in Autumn) and a keynote speech to the throngs at Seattle Center after the Pride Parade made it way there, Sunday afternoon.
Maupin reported to SGN (prior to arriving), 'When the invitation came to participate in Seattle Pride I jumped at the opportunity. I'm happy I'm speaking at both places because the library appearance can be more intimate and leisurely. Pride will be more festive and it's too different types of speaking talking to a large crowd in a park and in an auditorium and I enjoy both types.'
Maupin spoke about the 35 year span of writing his now eight-book opus Tales of the City, the brand-spanking-new musical based on it that opened in June at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco to huge box office and at least three extensions in the run, and a bit about the current look of politics and California's Prop 8 ban on Gay marriage.
You might not know that one of Maupin's characters, Mona Ramsey, moved to Seattle for a few chapters, at one point. Maupin's been here a number of times and has great affection for the city. He said, 'I have wandered all over the place in literary fashion, sometimes to places I know quite well. Some of the places I've written about in Tales have been places I went on vacation.
'I wanted to be able to call myself a Lesbian, so I went to the Island of Lesbos. I ended up living in a little village called Molyvos which is the family seat of the Dukakis family, and this was before five years before we hired Olympia Dukakis as Mrs. Madrigal. I didn't know at the time (that I would have a connection with the Dukakis family).'
Asked if he could see writing about living in Seattle, he chuckled, 'I'd never want to fake it about Seattle because I'd get called on it immediately.'
Maupin is clearly thrilled about the success of his new musical even though he said he's 'only a sort of senior advisor.' The people behind the musical are book writer Jeff Whitty, the Tony Award-winning book writer for Avenue Q, and music and lyrics by Jason Sellards (AKA Jake Shears) and John Garden (JJ) of the disco and glam rock-inspired pop group Scissor Sisters. Jason Moore (Avenue Q and Shrek) directed.
He said, 'It was very bold of A.C.T. to take it on. It's a $2.5 million production! But the public is really turning out. We've had a lot of people seeing the show two and three times now and there's a high percentage of out-of-town audience members. It makes for a very good feeling in the audience. It's almost interactive. I've seen the finished production nine times now, but I've been watching it develop in workshops for the past five years.'
Musicals are particularly difficult to get right and usually take a number of years to fully ripen. Maupin agreed, 'You don't know what you got until you see it in front of an audience, so there are a lot of incarnations. The creators are amazing guys who know how to throw things out and put things in and not be too vain. It's been an impressive thing to watch. The show runs a little under three hours and it was 40 minutes longer than that during previews. They had to perform a kind of surgery on it to make it shorter.'
And were there some great songs that got cut? He said, 'I could probably sing some ballads I really loved, but they weren't moving the story forward and they had to go. Some were replaced by even better songs.'
Of course there are hopes and possibilities for the musical to play elsewhere, but Maupin said, 'I have a private fantasy that it could go to the West End in London because I think they would get it. I have no idea what's coming up next, but the success might be very encouraging for people who want to produce it elsewhere. The story has worked as a miniseries and a book, and it's universally true, about a bunch of people who are trying to find love and security and home.'
The musical focuses on the era of Maupin's first two books in the series, the pre-AIDS time of 1976 and '77. The big focus was singer and 'orange juice queen' Anita Bryant's anti-Gay screed from Florida. Maupin chose to come out in response to that, as did many others, and he said, 'The sad thing is that a lot of GLBT people don't take action until someone says something ugly about them and then we rise to our own defense. Much like young people today are responding to hate groups like the National Organization for Marriage.
'My husband (Christopher Turner) and I were among the 18,000 couples who were legally married (in California) before Prop 8 banned marriage. They can't take that away from us. We file taxes as a couple. We can't file on the federal level. But the rest of the GLBT people in California have that right taken away. It infuriates me that I have to pay (federal) taxes and I'm not allowed the same rights as my straight brother and sister.
'Half the money given to Prop 8 was from the Mormon Church, which is one of the last institutions that should be passing judgment on marital institutions. The side in support of marriage equality was far too timid and should have been quite clear on a personal level (about) what it meant to millions of Californians.'
Maupin is clear that he is not a huge fan of Democrats over Republicans, necessarily. 'I don't look at any party of being our savior. If it had been up to elected people to make progress we wouldn't have made any at all.'
But he does, of course, feel strongly about the way Republicans have used homophobia to gain political advantage. 'Republicans have a real dilemma on their hands because they've used homophobia to get elected and they're not going to be able to do that much longer. The American public is less and less willing to demonize Gay people. There are still a few pockets in the south where they can play on suspicion and hatred, but most people have openly Gay people as family and friends these days and that's made all the difference.'
And he's glad to see a positive focus in the 'It Gets Better' campaign, started by Dan Savage. 'Dan Savage was brilliant, insofar as he appealed to our better instincts, pointing out our responsibility to lend a hand to young people who are suffering.
'For some reason we have to keep delivering this to every generation. I find that terribly frustrating. There's a song in the musical based on my own coming out letter to my own parents and essentially (the character) says that you're the ones who made me the way I am, so thank you because it's the light and joy of my life. That's my way of saying it gets better - 35 years ago.'
http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews39_25/page43.cfm
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Ten Percent 100 Episode - David Perry interviews Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin ("Tales of the City") speaks with David Perry for the 100th episode of "10 Percent" -- now the longest continuously running LGBT show in Northern California history. Original airdates: June 13-17, 11:30am & 10:30pm; June 18 & 19, 10:30pm. Comcast Channel 104.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp_afzuSZUs
Thursday, June 2, 2011
OUT in America
A new PBS special explores gay life from the city to the heartland
Posted by Natalie Hope McDonald on 6/2/2011 at 9:31AM
Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, country star Chely Wright and humorist Kate Clinton are all featured in a new special to be broadcast on PBS June 8 (8 p.m.). The one-hour special OUT in America – directed by Emmy winner Andrew Goldberg - spotlights famous and ordinary LGBT folks around the country, discussing what it means to be gay in both the heartland and big cities like New York and San Francisco.
“The first of its kind, OUT in America is a more realistic portrait of LGBT life than almost anything seen on TV before,” says Goldberg, who has also recently produced Jerusalem: Center of the World. “So often, media coverage of LGBT life in America is polarizing or exploitative of controversy and homophobia, or alternatively LGBT individuals are presented as caricatures of a stereotype. OUT in America however focuses on empowerment, diversity and relationships.”
The LGBT people featured in the special weaves together diverse stories about everything from first crushes and coming out to self-discovery, community and pride in time for Gay Pride month.
In addition to some of the star power featured in the film, other folks are also included – like Puerto Rico’s first openly gay political candidate, a transgender police officer, a Muslim lesbian, a gay rancher, a queer prom organizer, West Point grad, drag queens, a great-grandmother and a biracial couple who have been together for almost 50 years.
Check out a preview:
http://blogs.phillymag.com/gphilly/2011/06/02/out-in-america/
Posted by Natalie Hope McDonald on 6/2/2011 at 9:31AM
Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, country star Chely Wright and humorist Kate Clinton are all featured in a new special to be broadcast on PBS June 8 (8 p.m.). The one-hour special OUT in America – directed by Emmy winner Andrew Goldberg - spotlights famous and ordinary LGBT folks around the country, discussing what it means to be gay in both the heartland and big cities like New York and San Francisco.
“The first of its kind, OUT in America is a more realistic portrait of LGBT life than almost anything seen on TV before,” says Goldberg, who has also recently produced Jerusalem: Center of the World. “So often, media coverage of LGBT life in America is polarizing or exploitative of controversy and homophobia, or alternatively LGBT individuals are presented as caricatures of a stereotype. OUT in America however focuses on empowerment, diversity and relationships.”
The LGBT people featured in the special weaves together diverse stories about everything from first crushes and coming out to self-discovery, community and pride in time for Gay Pride month.
In addition to some of the star power featured in the film, other folks are also included – like Puerto Rico’s first openly gay political candidate, a transgender police officer, a Muslim lesbian, a gay rancher, a queer prom organizer, West Point grad, drag queens, a great-grandmother and a biracial couple who have been together for almost 50 years.
Check out a preview:
Watch the full episode. See more PBS Specials.
http://blogs.phillymag.com/gphilly/2011/06/02/out-in-america/
Monday, May 16, 2011
Barbary Lane’s Creator Looks Back on a Golden Age
By LAURA MILLER
Published: May 12, 2011
“We’ve always pined for the old days,” Armistead Maupin said of his fellow San Franciscans in a recent interview. When he moved to the city from Charleston, S.C., in 1971, he used to read Herb Caen’s columns mourning the 1930s, “and people now do it about the ’60s and ’70s. I don’t do it. I really don’t.”
Maybe he doesn’t, but for people all over the world, his best-selling and much-beloved “Tales of the City” novels epitomize those halcyon days between the blossoming of gay liberation and the advent of AIDS.
Tell people you’re from San Francisco, and chances are a dreamy look will come over their faces and they’ll rhapsodize about how much they love Mr. Maupin’s “Tales,” which originated as a serial in The San Francisco Chronicle, the same newspaper that published Caen. A fan once informed the author that her brother had asked to be buried with copies of his books.
It’s surprising, then, that it has taken this long for someone to turn “Tales of the City” into a musical. The saga of Mary Ann Singleton’s arrival in San Francisco and the adventures she shares with her fellow residents of 28 Barbary Lane under the aegis of the maternal yet enigmatic landlady Anna Madrigal seem ready-made for the stage. The story offers ample occasion for wistful ballads, smoldering torch songs and — above all — show-stopping anthems celebrating the giddy pleasure of unfettered self-expression.
The American Conservatory Theater has stepped into the breach at last, with a play featuring a book by the Tony Award winner Jeff Whitty (“Avenue Q”) and songs by Jake Shears and John Garden of the alternative glam band the Scissor Sisters. It will open June 1.
Written for an ephemeral medium and studded with of-the-moment references (does anyone even remember who Marisa Berenson is anymore?), “Tales of the City” might seem an improbable candidate for immortality. Nevertheless, Mr. Shears, who wasn’t even born when Mr. Maupin began publishing the serial in the mid-1970s, was so excited after Mr. Whitty approached him about the project that he and Mr. Garden began writing songs the same day, Mr. Garden told Rolling Stone magazine.
Certain works of fiction are so thoroughly identified with a particular place and time — the London of Sherlock Holmes, the Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe — that they become, by some strange alchemy, simultaneously local and universal.
Although there are no detectives in “Tales of the City,” there are plenty of mysteries, most having to do with who the characters really are and what they really want. San Francisco has long attracted people seeking the opportunity to explore parts of themselves they couldn’t embrace openly in their hometowns.
Yet however eccentric or even faddish Mr. Maupin’s characters may appear, beneath the est, the Quaalude-popping and the penchant for fern bars, their desires turn out to be reassuringly familiar and eternal.
“We didn’t feel the ’70s were going on while we were in the ’70s,” Mr. Maupin, 67, said. “It was just life. I was writing a story about people going through things that people always go through: love, loss and longing — all the big L’s.”
Mr. Maupin, like any true lover, continues to pay careful attention to his beloved city’s moods and passions.
Back in the day, he set his fictional scenes in the real-life hangouts of San Franciscans, seeking out local color at the disco Dance Your Ass Off (“Thank God I never have to do that again,” he said he thought when he left) and checking out “gay night” at the Grand Arena roller rink. For the most recent “Tales” novel, “Mary Ann in Autumn” (published last fall) , he revisited his old haunts in Russian Hill and gave his heroine the same Proustian experience he had himself, thanks to a scoop of Swensen’s Swiss orange chip ice cream.
To keep up with the younger generation, Mr. Maupin also has what he calls “spies.” One is his 25-year-old physical trainer. “She alleviated my fear over whether or not I was missing the spirit of the times. She sounds so much like my friends from 30 years ago,” he said. “It’s basically still the same when you’re young and new in town and trying to beat Mona’s Law” — named for a major character in the series — “which is that you can have a hot job, a hot apartment and a hot lover but you can’t have all three at the same time. That formula still applies.”
As for the city itself, has it changed? “It’s physically more seductive than it’s ever been,” Mr. Maupin said. He and his husband, Christopher Turner, love walking their Labradoodle along the restored shoreline at Crissy Field. Still, he understands when his younger fans say they wish they could have lived in San Francisco in the ’70s.
“It was a golden era,” he conceded, “and I saw it as such when I was living it. I remember standing backstage at ‘Beach Blanket Babylon,’ where I was a scenery pusher, and feeling that I was gloriously blessed to be feeling this freedom and living in this place.”
Laura Miller is a senior writer at Salon.com, which she co-founded in 1995.
lauramiller@nyc.rr.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13bcmaupin.html?_r=1
Published: May 12, 2011
“We’ve always pined for the old days,” Armistead Maupin said of his fellow San Franciscans in a recent interview. When he moved to the city from Charleston, S.C., in 1971, he used to read Herb Caen’s columns mourning the 1930s, “and people now do it about the ’60s and ’70s. I don’t do it. I really don’t.”
Maybe he doesn’t, but for people all over the world, his best-selling and much-beloved “Tales of the City” novels epitomize those halcyon days between the blossoming of gay liberation and the advent of AIDS.
Tell people you’re from San Francisco, and chances are a dreamy look will come over their faces and they’ll rhapsodize about how much they love Mr. Maupin’s “Tales,” which originated as a serial in The San Francisco Chronicle, the same newspaper that published Caen. A fan once informed the author that her brother had asked to be buried with copies of his books.
It’s surprising, then, that it has taken this long for someone to turn “Tales of the City” into a musical. The saga of Mary Ann Singleton’s arrival in San Francisco and the adventures she shares with her fellow residents of 28 Barbary Lane under the aegis of the maternal yet enigmatic landlady Anna Madrigal seem ready-made for the stage. The story offers ample occasion for wistful ballads, smoldering torch songs and — above all — show-stopping anthems celebrating the giddy pleasure of unfettered self-expression.
The American Conservatory Theater has stepped into the breach at last, with a play featuring a book by the Tony Award winner Jeff Whitty (“Avenue Q”) and songs by Jake Shears and John Garden of the alternative glam band the Scissor Sisters. It will open June 1.
Written for an ephemeral medium and studded with of-the-moment references (does anyone even remember who Marisa Berenson is anymore?), “Tales of the City” might seem an improbable candidate for immortality. Nevertheless, Mr. Shears, who wasn’t even born when Mr. Maupin began publishing the serial in the mid-1970s, was so excited after Mr. Whitty approached him about the project that he and Mr. Garden began writing songs the same day, Mr. Garden told Rolling Stone magazine.
Certain works of fiction are so thoroughly identified with a particular place and time — the London of Sherlock Holmes, the Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe — that they become, by some strange alchemy, simultaneously local and universal.
Although there are no detectives in “Tales of the City,” there are plenty of mysteries, most having to do with who the characters really are and what they really want. San Francisco has long attracted people seeking the opportunity to explore parts of themselves they couldn’t embrace openly in their hometowns.
Yet however eccentric or even faddish Mr. Maupin’s characters may appear, beneath the est, the Quaalude-popping and the penchant for fern bars, their desires turn out to be reassuringly familiar and eternal.
“We didn’t feel the ’70s were going on while we were in the ’70s,” Mr. Maupin, 67, said. “It was just life. I was writing a story about people going through things that people always go through: love, loss and longing — all the big L’s.”
Mr. Maupin, like any true lover, continues to pay careful attention to his beloved city’s moods and passions.
Back in the day, he set his fictional scenes in the real-life hangouts of San Franciscans, seeking out local color at the disco Dance Your Ass Off (“Thank God I never have to do that again,” he said he thought when he left) and checking out “gay night” at the Grand Arena roller rink. For the most recent “Tales” novel, “Mary Ann in Autumn” (published last fall) , he revisited his old haunts in Russian Hill and gave his heroine the same Proustian experience he had himself, thanks to a scoop of Swensen’s Swiss orange chip ice cream.
To keep up with the younger generation, Mr. Maupin also has what he calls “spies.” One is his 25-year-old physical trainer. “She alleviated my fear over whether or not I was missing the spirit of the times. She sounds so much like my friends from 30 years ago,” he said. “It’s basically still the same when you’re young and new in town and trying to beat Mona’s Law” — named for a major character in the series — “which is that you can have a hot job, a hot apartment and a hot lover but you can’t have all three at the same time. That formula still applies.”
As for the city itself, has it changed? “It’s physically more seductive than it’s ever been,” Mr. Maupin said. He and his husband, Christopher Turner, love walking their Labradoodle along the restored shoreline at Crissy Field. Still, he understands when his younger fans say they wish they could have lived in San Francisco in the ’70s.
“It was a golden era,” he conceded, “and I saw it as such when I was living it. I remember standing backstage at ‘Beach Blanket Babylon,’ where I was a scenery pusher, and feeling that I was gloriously blessed to be feeling this freedom and living in this place.”
Laura Miller is a senior writer at Salon.com, which she co-founded in 1995.
lauramiller@nyc.rr.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13bcmaupin.html?_r=1
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Armistead Maupin's 'Tales' have changed lives
Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The story began 35 years ago when wide-eyed Mary Ann Singleton arrived in San Francisco on vacation and called her parents in Cleveland to say she wouldn't be coming home.
"I just want to start making my own life," the 25-year-old Mary Ann explained, as her mother fretted that her daughter would end up living with "a bunch of hippies and mass murderers!"
The first chapter of "Tales of the City," titled "Taking the Plunge," began a newspaper series that captivated readers in 1976 with its gay, straight, transgender, old, young, sex starved and ultimately lovable cast of characters who had found their way to San Francisco to establish their own true identities.
The series took off from there, and became the backbone for eight books translated into 15 languages, a television miniseries and now a world premiere musical - set to open in previews at the American Conservatory Theater on May 18.
"Tales," which came to define an era and ethos in San Francisco, titillating and repelling readers with its unabashed portrayal of queer lives, made its author, Armistead Maupin, a literary star and gay spokesman.
"I've been living with these characters for 35 years," Maupin chuckled, sitting in the living room of the home he shares with his husband, Christopher Turner, a cat named Maxine and a Labradoodle named Philo T. Farnsworth. "They don't wander into the room. I don't have altars to them. When I created them, they were completely and utterly radical. All of these characters are pieces of my own personality."
Reluctant celebrity
Maupin, who turns 67 this week, is both a reluctant celebrity and an impassioned voice for gays. He can be a charming Southern gentleman one moment and impatient the next. He grows weary of rehashing his story and the story of "Tales" - the two are inextricable - answering some questions with a sigh and, "It's all on my website."
He has written other novels, including "The Night Listener," which was adapted for a Robin Williams film, but none outshines "Tales." It is "Tales of the City" that paid for his stunning home in Parnassus Heights, that took the boy from the conservative family in Raleigh, N.C., and made him a San Francisco icon, and that compels strangers to approach him on the street and say his writing changed their lives.
"What I'm proudest of is that all sorts of people read 'Tales' and feel like the book gives them permission to be who they are," Maupin said. "If I hear that I in some way affected the course of someone's life, that is the biggest compliment I can be paid."
Carey Perloff, artistic director at ACT, arrived in the Bay Area in 1976, just as Maupin's series was launched in The Chronicle.
"I was a student at Stanford when I started reading it," Perloff said. "Being in California was my rebellion from the East Coast. I wasn't Mary Ann from Cleveland, but I was Carey from Philadelphia.
"What I love about Armistead is how he writes about these totally unpretentious, three-dimensional characters," she continued. "He lets you know what it's like to be young in San Francisco and trying to search for what you truly want in life. I think everybody has their 'Tales of the City' story."
Michelle Tea, who has won awards for her lesbian fiction, says Maupin's success sends a message to other writers that "writing about the real, queer world is possible."
K.M. Soehnlein, whose most recent novel is "Robin and Ruby," has taken inspiration from Maupin as a craftsman.
"There is a hard-earned simplicity of his prose, and of course he's hilarious," said Soehnlein, who teaches writing at the University of San Francisco. "He's kind of a pop entertainer, in that he uses popular culture, and he's a literary artist. The work never feels dated because readers can relate to these archetypal characters: the new visitor to San Francisco, the person looking for love, the rebel who finds herself up against high society. This is the timelessness of human experience."
Maupin, who graduated from the University of North Carolina and served as a naval officer in Vietnam, arrived in San Francisco in 1971. He had worked at a radio station in Raleigh, managed by the future U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, and - then a conservative himself - thought highly of Helms. He also had worked as a reporter with a newspaper in Charleston before being offered a position in San Francisco with the Associated Press.
"I only stayed at the AP for six months," Maupin said. "I was aching for something more creative."
Variety of jobs
In the years that followed, Maupin, like the characters who would populate "Tales," held a variety of short-term jobs, from selling Thai imports on Union Street and working as a "Kelly Girl" to writing letters for an Episcopal minister. Of his time as a Kelly Girl, he quipped: "They used to send me notices advising me to wear a conservative skirt when I reported for work. I was tempted to obey them."
In 1976, Maupin pitched a fictional daily column about life in the city to the editors at The Chronicle, and, to his "horror," the editors said yes ("I had to look a lot more confident than I was," he said). The premiere of "Tales of the City" was on May 24, and came with a front-page headline, "She's 25, Single and Mad for S.F."
"The Chronicle editors gave me a list (of titles) to choose from," Maupin said, "including 'The San Francisco Story,' 'San Francisco Stories,' 'Tales of San Francisco' and 'Tales of the City.' I thought 'Tales of the City' had a nice Dickensian ring."
Because of the racy subject matter, writer and editors engaged in endless battles. "The editors had a conservative attitude about what Chron readers were like," he said. "It was funny what I could and couldn't say. I had these lesbian characters raising kids in the city and they were in the car on the way to the Russian River and a kid in the back says, 'What is blue and creamy?' 'Smurf's sperm!' I had to change it to 'What is blue and makes babies?"
Maupin, who was closeted until he came to San Francisco, grounded the serial - published off and on in The Chronicle until 1983 and serialized in The Examiner in 1986 - in current events. When singer Anita Bryant launched her anti-gay crusade in Florida, Maupin had his character, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, whose family was from Florida, send his coming-out, "letter to mama," referencing the "cruel and ignorant piety of people like Anita Bryant."
'"I know this may be hard for you to believe," Mouse wrote in the letter, "but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being."
Confronting AIDS
In "Babycakes," the last of the "Tales" series to be serialized in The Chronicle, Maupin writes about the AIDS crisis, prompting complaints from readers who said he had spoiled their "light morning entertainment." And, later, Mouse tests positive for HIV.
"These characters were invented as they were needed," Maupin explained. "But I was very aware that as a gay person, I was participating in a social revolution. I had finally arrived at a point where my politics and my personal life were in sync with each other and that was an exhilarating experience. That was the thing I had to share with the public."
Coming out had other benefits, too, he said.
"I didn't start to be a good writer until then," Maupin said. "When you are in the closet, you are making a valiant effort to keep certain parts of your personality locked down. Then when you come out, everything in your heart and mind is fair game."
As the characters found themselves, so did Maupin. "If I look back on it, I was trying to give myself permission," he said.
Today, Maupin's life is more about fine-tuning than finding. He married Turner, a 39-year-old Web developer, twice - first in Vancouver and then in the Marin County garden of writer Amy Tan.
"Christopher Isherwood said to me, 'Life is so much simpler when you have narrowed down to one the person you're going to be with,' " said Maupin, who had his fill of bachelorhood after his 12-year relationship with gay activist Terry Anderson ended. "Our job as human beings is to love. It means practicing it on a daily basis."
Street meeting
Maupin and Turner met on 18th Street near Castro. Maupin had seen Turner's picture on a website connecting younger and older men, and had even printed out Turner's picture, joking to friends that the young hunk was his new love. When Maupin spotted him on the street one afternoon, he struck up a conversation.
"I'd always been attracted to him," Turner said of Maupin. "I'd seen him out and about. I was drawn to his presence."
Turner is now Maupin's first reader of new material. "I will come home, and he will have finished a chapter and will read it to me," Turner said. "It always amazes me how many people will come up and say 'Tales of the City' really changed things for them."
Maupin, who is taking some time off from writing, says he has ideas for the next novel in the series. His recent works in the series include "Michael Tolliver Lives," about Mouse at 55, and "Mary Ann in Autumn," with Mary Ann at 57.
"I wait until the spirit moves me," he said. "Writing is not a lot of fun - I like having written."
He says he has been involved off and on with the making of the ACT musical.
"I'm kind of the eminence grise of the production," he said.
While he and Turner own land in the Sierra, "between Yosemite and Tahoe," the author doesn't envision a final chapter outside of San Francisco.
"Book tours take me everywhere," Maupin said. "I'm always considering the possibility of being somewhere else. But nothing quite adds up to San Francisco. You can still find the life you want here."
Musical
"Tales of the City," world premiere. Previews start May 18. Opens May 31. Continues through July 10. American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St. (415) 749-2228. www.act-sf.org.
Public event
"Thoroughly Modern Maupin: The Legacy of Armistead," an evening of readings and music celebrating Maupin's work. Hosted by Litquake and ACT. 8 p.m. Thursday. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St. www.litquake.org.
E-mail Julian Guthrie at jguthrie@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/08/MNDB1JB9J7.DTL
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The story began 35 years ago when wide-eyed Mary Ann Singleton arrived in San Francisco on vacation and called her parents in Cleveland to say she wouldn't be coming home.
"I just want to start making my own life," the 25-year-old Mary Ann explained, as her mother fretted that her daughter would end up living with "a bunch of hippies and mass murderers!"
The first chapter of "Tales of the City," titled "Taking the Plunge," began a newspaper series that captivated readers in 1976 with its gay, straight, transgender, old, young, sex starved and ultimately lovable cast of characters who had found their way to San Francisco to establish their own true identities.
The series took off from there, and became the backbone for eight books translated into 15 languages, a television miniseries and now a world premiere musical - set to open in previews at the American Conservatory Theater on May 18.
"Tales," which came to define an era and ethos in San Francisco, titillating and repelling readers with its unabashed portrayal of queer lives, made its author, Armistead Maupin, a literary star and gay spokesman.
"I've been living with these characters for 35 years," Maupin chuckled, sitting in the living room of the home he shares with his husband, Christopher Turner, a cat named Maxine and a Labradoodle named Philo T. Farnsworth. "They don't wander into the room. I don't have altars to them. When I created them, they were completely and utterly radical. All of these characters are pieces of my own personality."
Reluctant celebrity
Maupin, who turns 67 this week, is both a reluctant celebrity and an impassioned voice for gays. He can be a charming Southern gentleman one moment and impatient the next. He grows weary of rehashing his story and the story of "Tales" - the two are inextricable - answering some questions with a sigh and, "It's all on my website."
He has written other novels, including "The Night Listener," which was adapted for a Robin Williams film, but none outshines "Tales." It is "Tales of the City" that paid for his stunning home in Parnassus Heights, that took the boy from the conservative family in Raleigh, N.C., and made him a San Francisco icon, and that compels strangers to approach him on the street and say his writing changed their lives.
"What I'm proudest of is that all sorts of people read 'Tales' and feel like the book gives them permission to be who they are," Maupin said. "If I hear that I in some way affected the course of someone's life, that is the biggest compliment I can be paid."
Carey Perloff, artistic director at ACT, arrived in the Bay Area in 1976, just as Maupin's series was launched in The Chronicle.
"I was a student at Stanford when I started reading it," Perloff said. "Being in California was my rebellion from the East Coast. I wasn't Mary Ann from Cleveland, but I was Carey from Philadelphia.
"What I love about Armistead is how he writes about these totally unpretentious, three-dimensional characters," she continued. "He lets you know what it's like to be young in San Francisco and trying to search for what you truly want in life. I think everybody has their 'Tales of the City' story."
Michelle Tea, who has won awards for her lesbian fiction, says Maupin's success sends a message to other writers that "writing about the real, queer world is possible."
K.M. Soehnlein, whose most recent novel is "Robin and Ruby," has taken inspiration from Maupin as a craftsman.
"There is a hard-earned simplicity of his prose, and of course he's hilarious," said Soehnlein, who teaches writing at the University of San Francisco. "He's kind of a pop entertainer, in that he uses popular culture, and he's a literary artist. The work never feels dated because readers can relate to these archetypal characters: the new visitor to San Francisco, the person looking for love, the rebel who finds herself up against high society. This is the timelessness of human experience."
Maupin, who graduated from the University of North Carolina and served as a naval officer in Vietnam, arrived in San Francisco in 1971. He had worked at a radio station in Raleigh, managed by the future U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, and - then a conservative himself - thought highly of Helms. He also had worked as a reporter with a newspaper in Charleston before being offered a position in San Francisco with the Associated Press.
"I only stayed at the AP for six months," Maupin said. "I was aching for something more creative."
Variety of jobs
In the years that followed, Maupin, like the characters who would populate "Tales," held a variety of short-term jobs, from selling Thai imports on Union Street and working as a "Kelly Girl" to writing letters for an Episcopal minister. Of his time as a Kelly Girl, he quipped: "They used to send me notices advising me to wear a conservative skirt when I reported for work. I was tempted to obey them."
In 1976, Maupin pitched a fictional daily column about life in the city to the editors at The Chronicle, and, to his "horror," the editors said yes ("I had to look a lot more confident than I was," he said). The premiere of "Tales of the City" was on May 24, and came with a front-page headline, "She's 25, Single and Mad for S.F."
"The Chronicle editors gave me a list (of titles) to choose from," Maupin said, "including 'The San Francisco Story,' 'San Francisco Stories,' 'Tales of San Francisco' and 'Tales of the City.' I thought 'Tales of the City' had a nice Dickensian ring."
Because of the racy subject matter, writer and editors engaged in endless battles. "The editors had a conservative attitude about what Chron readers were like," he said. "It was funny what I could and couldn't say. I had these lesbian characters raising kids in the city and they were in the car on the way to the Russian River and a kid in the back says, 'What is blue and creamy?' 'Smurf's sperm!' I had to change it to 'What is blue and makes babies?"
Maupin, who was closeted until he came to San Francisco, grounded the serial - published off and on in The Chronicle until 1983 and serialized in The Examiner in 1986 - in current events. When singer Anita Bryant launched her anti-gay crusade in Florida, Maupin had his character, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, whose family was from Florida, send his coming-out, "letter to mama," referencing the "cruel and ignorant piety of people like Anita Bryant."
'"I know this may be hard for you to believe," Mouse wrote in the letter, "but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being."
Confronting AIDS
In "Babycakes," the last of the "Tales" series to be serialized in The Chronicle, Maupin writes about the AIDS crisis, prompting complaints from readers who said he had spoiled their "light morning entertainment." And, later, Mouse tests positive for HIV.
"These characters were invented as they were needed," Maupin explained. "But I was very aware that as a gay person, I was participating in a social revolution. I had finally arrived at a point where my politics and my personal life were in sync with each other and that was an exhilarating experience. That was the thing I had to share with the public."
Coming out had other benefits, too, he said.
"I didn't start to be a good writer until then," Maupin said. "When you are in the closet, you are making a valiant effort to keep certain parts of your personality locked down. Then when you come out, everything in your heart and mind is fair game."
As the characters found themselves, so did Maupin. "If I look back on it, I was trying to give myself permission," he said.
Today, Maupin's life is more about fine-tuning than finding. He married Turner, a 39-year-old Web developer, twice - first in Vancouver and then in the Marin County garden of writer Amy Tan.
"Christopher Isherwood said to me, 'Life is so much simpler when you have narrowed down to one the person you're going to be with,' " said Maupin, who had his fill of bachelorhood after his 12-year relationship with gay activist Terry Anderson ended. "Our job as human beings is to love. It means practicing it on a daily basis."
Street meeting
Maupin and Turner met on 18th Street near Castro. Maupin had seen Turner's picture on a website connecting younger and older men, and had even printed out Turner's picture, joking to friends that the young hunk was his new love. When Maupin spotted him on the street one afternoon, he struck up a conversation.
"I'd always been attracted to him," Turner said of Maupin. "I'd seen him out and about. I was drawn to his presence."
Turner is now Maupin's first reader of new material. "I will come home, and he will have finished a chapter and will read it to me," Turner said. "It always amazes me how many people will come up and say 'Tales of the City' really changed things for them."
Maupin, who is taking some time off from writing, says he has ideas for the next novel in the series. His recent works in the series include "Michael Tolliver Lives," about Mouse at 55, and "Mary Ann in Autumn," with Mary Ann at 57.
"I wait until the spirit moves me," he said. "Writing is not a lot of fun - I like having written."
He says he has been involved off and on with the making of the ACT musical.
"I'm kind of the eminence grise of the production," he said.
While he and Turner own land in the Sierra, "between Yosemite and Tahoe," the author doesn't envision a final chapter outside of San Francisco.
"Book tours take me everywhere," Maupin said. "I'm always considering the possibility of being somewhere else. But nothing quite adds up to San Francisco. You can still find the life you want here."
Musical
"Tales of the City," world premiere. Previews start May 18. Opens May 31. Continues through July 10. American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St. (415) 749-2228. www.act-sf.org.
Public event
"Thoroughly Modern Maupin: The Legacy of Armistead," an evening of readings and music celebrating Maupin's work. Hosted by Litquake and ACT. 8 p.m. Thursday. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St. www.litquake.org.
E-mail Julian Guthrie at jguthrie@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/08/MNDB1JB9J7.DTL
Monday, March 28, 2011
Will Coviello chats with Tales of the City writer Armistead Maupin
San Francisco Treat
Will Coviello chats with Tales of the City writer Armistead Maupin, who's coming to this week's Tennessee Williams Literary Festival
by Will Coviello
The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
March 23-27
www.tennesseewilliams.net
More than Tennessee Williams, author Armistead Maupin is inextricably associated with a place. Creator of the Tales of the City series, he chronicled bohemian and bustling life in San Francisco from the mid-1970s onward. He also met Williams in San Francisco, though they didn't discuss writing.
Maupin attended an art gallery opening in the South of Market district in the mid-1970s. Williams was inside, attracting attention and being hounded for photos. After escaping the throng of fans, Williams spotted Maupin in the parking lot. Surmising Maupin wasn't smoking a regular cigarette, Williams approached him.
"I can't exactly call it the passing of the torch from one writer to another," Maupin says, laughing. "We just sat on the hood of a car, smoked a joint and had a discussion about the moon."
At the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, Maupin will read from Williams' work and discuss his own writing. The festival celebrates both its 25th anniversary and the centennial of Williams' birth, and the schedule of events includes readings and discussions by authors, actors who starred in famous productions of Williams' work, literary agents, journalists and others. Theatrical productions include The Glass Menagerie and world premieres of recently discovered one-act plays by Williams. There also are parties, walking tours and the popular Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest on Sunday in Jackson Square.
In tribute to Williams' birthday and his career, actors and writers will read from his work. Maupin will leave dramatic scenes to actors and present an essay titled "Too Personal," which Williams used as an introduction to Small Craft Warnings. In it, he addressed the divide between writing fiction and autobiography. Critics and fans often pick apart his plays, trying to match real people to fictional characters, and Williams protested that his plays exhibited his talent, not his diary. Maupin defends the art of writing fiction, but protests less strenuously about the connection.
"Artists draw from their own lives," Maupin says. "Almost all of my characters are autobiographical to one degree or another."
The distinction stirred debate when he released Michael Tolliver Lives!. At first Maupin said it was distinct from Tales of the City, and it was different in that it was a first-person novel and not about a swirling array of characters like previous books in the series. But Maupin later dropped his defense and said the novel is an extension of the series about one of its central characters, and parts of it are similar to his own life, particularly the manner in which Tolliver comes out as a gay man in a letter to his parents.
"I like the disguise of fiction, but I draw on cultural realities," Maupin says.
Maupin was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Raleigh, N.C. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and became a reporter afterward. In the early 1970s, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for the Associated Press. The beginning of his Tales series were short stories he published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The latest installment, Mary Ann in Autumn, was released in 2010.
Maupin adopted San Francisco as his new home almost instantly, in part because some elements reminded him of living in the South.
"It was a tolerant and vibrant city with the qualities of a small town," he says. "It had a respect for tradition that was in perfect keeping with my Southern experiences."
Theatrical productions at the festival offer insight into the development of characters and ideas in Williams' work. Southern Rep premieres three one-act plays that were discovered recently: The Pretty Trap, The Magic Tower and Every Twenty Minutes. The Pretty Trap is a precursor to The Glass Menagerie, but it's a comedy and covers the basic story in 20 pages. Director Aimee Hayes points out that the play is very different from Menagerie. It focuses on Amanda Wingfield, Tom isn't depressed and Laura doesn't limp, Hayes says.
"Everyone knows these roles," she adds. But she told the actors, "We have to think about this as a Saturday Night Live sketch and take it from there."
One of the reasons it has not been professionally performed before may have to do with Williams' feelings about it: He hated it.
"Williams wrote in his notes that he didn't like it," Hayes says. "But for our purposes, it's delightful. We see him working toward the full play."
She also sees elements in the other two works that preview more fully realized themes in the plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth.
Fans can compare The Pretty Trap with a full production of The Glass Menagerie by the UNO Department of Film, Theatre and Communications Arts at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, starring Janet Shea as Amanda.
Both Maupin and Hayes note that Williams was a dedicated writer who awoke early every morning to work. He wrote many short stories and short plays, and characters in them were plucked for greater roles in his better known works. Hayes says he pushed himself hard to improve his final product.
"He could have written for TV, he could have been a sitcom writer," she says. "If he wasn't ruthless about his own work, he wouldn't have gone on to create characters like Blanche."
With the inclusion of the one-acts, the festival's participants and productions celebrate every facet of Williams' legacy. And, of course, locals can channel their own inner Stellas and Stanleys, comic or dramatic, at the annual Shouting Contest in Jackson Square.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/san-francisco-treat/Content?oid=1633682
Will Coviello chats with Tales of the City writer Armistead Maupin, who's coming to this week's Tennessee Williams Literary Festival
by Will Coviello
The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
March 23-27
www.tennesseewilliams.net
More than Tennessee Williams, author Armistead Maupin is inextricably associated with a place. Creator of the Tales of the City series, he chronicled bohemian and bustling life in San Francisco from the mid-1970s onward. He also met Williams in San Francisco, though they didn't discuss writing.
Maupin attended an art gallery opening in the South of Market district in the mid-1970s. Williams was inside, attracting attention and being hounded for photos. After escaping the throng of fans, Williams spotted Maupin in the parking lot. Surmising Maupin wasn't smoking a regular cigarette, Williams approached him.
"I can't exactly call it the passing of the torch from one writer to another," Maupin says, laughing. "We just sat on the hood of a car, smoked a joint and had a discussion about the moon."
At the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, Maupin will read from Williams' work and discuss his own writing. The festival celebrates both its 25th anniversary and the centennial of Williams' birth, and the schedule of events includes readings and discussions by authors, actors who starred in famous productions of Williams' work, literary agents, journalists and others. Theatrical productions include The Glass Menagerie and world premieres of recently discovered one-act plays by Williams. There also are parties, walking tours and the popular Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest on Sunday in Jackson Square.
In tribute to Williams' birthday and his career, actors and writers will read from his work. Maupin will leave dramatic scenes to actors and present an essay titled "Too Personal," which Williams used as an introduction to Small Craft Warnings. In it, he addressed the divide between writing fiction and autobiography. Critics and fans often pick apart his plays, trying to match real people to fictional characters, and Williams protested that his plays exhibited his talent, not his diary. Maupin defends the art of writing fiction, but protests less strenuously about the connection.
"Artists draw from their own lives," Maupin says. "Almost all of my characters are autobiographical to one degree or another."
The distinction stirred debate when he released Michael Tolliver Lives!. At first Maupin said it was distinct from Tales of the City, and it was different in that it was a first-person novel and not about a swirling array of characters like previous books in the series. But Maupin later dropped his defense and said the novel is an extension of the series about one of its central characters, and parts of it are similar to his own life, particularly the manner in which Tolliver comes out as a gay man in a letter to his parents.
"I like the disguise of fiction, but I draw on cultural realities," Maupin says.
Maupin was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Raleigh, N.C. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and became a reporter afterward. In the early 1970s, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for the Associated Press. The beginning of his Tales series were short stories he published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The latest installment, Mary Ann in Autumn, was released in 2010.
Maupin adopted San Francisco as his new home almost instantly, in part because some elements reminded him of living in the South.
"It was a tolerant and vibrant city with the qualities of a small town," he says. "It had a respect for tradition that was in perfect keeping with my Southern experiences."
Theatrical productions at the festival offer insight into the development of characters and ideas in Williams' work. Southern Rep premieres three one-act plays that were discovered recently: The Pretty Trap, The Magic Tower and Every Twenty Minutes. The Pretty Trap is a precursor to The Glass Menagerie, but it's a comedy and covers the basic story in 20 pages. Director Aimee Hayes points out that the play is very different from Menagerie. It focuses on Amanda Wingfield, Tom isn't depressed and Laura doesn't limp, Hayes says.
"Everyone knows these roles," she adds. But she told the actors, "We have to think about this as a Saturday Night Live sketch and take it from there."
One of the reasons it has not been professionally performed before may have to do with Williams' feelings about it: He hated it.
"Williams wrote in his notes that he didn't like it," Hayes says. "But for our purposes, it's delightful. We see him working toward the full play."
She also sees elements in the other two works that preview more fully realized themes in the plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth.
Fans can compare The Pretty Trap with a full production of The Glass Menagerie by the UNO Department of Film, Theatre and Communications Arts at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, starring Janet Shea as Amanda.
Both Maupin and Hayes note that Williams was a dedicated writer who awoke early every morning to work. He wrote many short stories and short plays, and characters in them were plucked for greater roles in his better known works. Hayes says he pushed himself hard to improve his final product.
"He could have written for TV, he could have been a sitcom writer," she says. "If he wasn't ruthless about his own work, he wouldn't have gone on to create characters like Blanche."
With the inclusion of the one-acts, the festival's participants and productions celebrate every facet of Williams' legacy. And, of course, locals can channel their own inner Stellas and Stanleys, comic or dramatic, at the annual Shouting Contest in Jackson Square.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/san-francisco-treat/Content?oid=1633682
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tales of Armistead Maupin
Monday, 14 March 2011, 2:21 pm
by Evelyn Tsitas
For American author and gay activist Armistead Maupin, there is only one place to call home - San Francisco, the city that inspired his enormously popular social comedy series Tales of the City.
"I cruise other countries, but I come home to San Francisco in my head," he said.
Maupin generously praised Australia's "Victorian buildings and wide open spaces" during his March visit. However, for him, the city that invented the words hippie, beatnik and hoodlum reflect an attitude and a way people live that breathed life into him when he arrived in the 1970s as a conservative, "in the closet" Vietnam veteran.
Maupin is currently on tour promoting his new book, Mary Ann in Autumn, which is the 8th in the Tales of the City Series. The woman in the title is Maupin's much loved character Mary Ann Singleton, whom he has chronicled from her move to San Francisco and her developing relationship with the people she meets, including life in a bohemian boarding house run by the transgender matriarch Mrs Madrigal.
The rest of the world may be a long way from Mrs Madrigal's "comfy old apartment house" on 28 Barbary Lane, but Maupin stressed his Tales series runs concurrent to gay culture. As soon as a country amasses a gay middle class, Maupin said, "my books take off when that rainbow flag starts flying".
Maupin, who started the series as a weekly column in the local newspaper in the 1970s, said he struggled with telling his parents he was gay.
"At that time, homosexuality was a mental illness and a crime, but I was in San Francisco discovering the bath houses and finding myself as a gay man."
But this conflict and duplicity was also helpful in his career. Maupin cheerfully admits that as a writer "it is your job to be a fake."
"I have always been writing about everyone and for everyone, even though I am proud of my activism," Maupin told the largely gay audience at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre during his recent Australian tour. His public lecture – hosted by actor Noni Hazlehurst, - was part of the Wheeler Centre's Big Gay Week.
"When it comes to my writing, I am trying to tap into something that is going on in society," he said.
"For me, in the emerging gay culture of San Francisco in the 1970s, I was on a rampage."
It is fitting that a new musical version of Tales of the City, starring Betty Buckley, will workshop at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in June, with music and lyrics by Jake Shears and John Garden of the Scissor Sisters.
"I realised I'd written a love story 30 years ago that made sense to me now," Maupin said.
He said that he looks for "some sort of validation" in his life as a writer. "I tell my worst secrets in fiction. Then I feel less alone because of the response I get from people," he said.
Maupin recalled how he had a "gay quota" of characters he was allowed to insert into his newspaper column.
"At one point I had a character wake up and discover a dog humping her leg, and I argued the dog should be placed in the heterosexual quota," Maupin said.
There was, however, a serious undertone for the gay activist as he spoke of the angst he felt when deciding to come out to his friends and family. He first uttered the words "I think I am homosexual" to a good female friend - on whom he based the character Mary Ann Singleton. Her response? " Big fucking deal."
He said his friend's support, and the burgeoning gay culture of San Francisco in the mid-70s, emboldened him to discover his identity as a gay man. Maupin said he came out at the same time he as he was writing the column, and so wove in his experiences into that of his characters. Like many fiction writers, he said he "hid behind" the people he created.
"I disguise myself in my characters. I point out people's similarities while describing their differences," he said.
"As a writer, your job is empathy. You have to inhabit everyone."
This is exactly what Maupin has done with feisty Mary Ann Singleton. The last time Maupin wrote about her, Mary Ann had left the city, husband, daughter and her best friend, Michael, whom readers had come to love.
Mary Ann in Autumn tracks the now 57 year old Mary Ann down as she returns to San Francisco. She finds that everything has changed – including 28 Barbary Lane. Those she left behind have moved on. It has been called "a tale of long-lost friends and unrealized dreams, of fear and regret, of penance and redemption — and of the unshakable sense that this world we love, this life we live, this drama in which we all play a part, does indeed go by much too fast."(The New York Times, Nov 12, 2010)
"You are not always going to be young," Maupin reminded his Melbourne audience.
Evelyn Tsitas is a PhD student at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: evelyntsitas@gmail.com
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1103/S00131/tales-of-armistead-maupin.htm
by Evelyn Tsitas
For American author and gay activist Armistead Maupin, there is only one place to call home - San Francisco, the city that inspired his enormously popular social comedy series Tales of the City.
"I cruise other countries, but I come home to San Francisco in my head," he said.
Maupin generously praised Australia's "Victorian buildings and wide open spaces" during his March visit. However, for him, the city that invented the words hippie, beatnik and hoodlum reflect an attitude and a way people live that breathed life into him when he arrived in the 1970s as a conservative, "in the closet" Vietnam veteran.
Maupin is currently on tour promoting his new book, Mary Ann in Autumn, which is the 8th in the Tales of the City Series. The woman in the title is Maupin's much loved character Mary Ann Singleton, whom he has chronicled from her move to San Francisco and her developing relationship with the people she meets, including life in a bohemian boarding house run by the transgender matriarch Mrs Madrigal.
The rest of the world may be a long way from Mrs Madrigal's "comfy old apartment house" on 28 Barbary Lane, but Maupin stressed his Tales series runs concurrent to gay culture. As soon as a country amasses a gay middle class, Maupin said, "my books take off when that rainbow flag starts flying".
Maupin, who started the series as a weekly column in the local newspaper in the 1970s, said he struggled with telling his parents he was gay.
"At that time, homosexuality was a mental illness and a crime, but I was in San Francisco discovering the bath houses and finding myself as a gay man."
But this conflict and duplicity was also helpful in his career. Maupin cheerfully admits that as a writer "it is your job to be a fake."
"I have always been writing about everyone and for everyone, even though I am proud of my activism," Maupin told the largely gay audience at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre during his recent Australian tour. His public lecture – hosted by actor Noni Hazlehurst, - was part of the Wheeler Centre's Big Gay Week.
"When it comes to my writing, I am trying to tap into something that is going on in society," he said.
"For me, in the emerging gay culture of San Francisco in the 1970s, I was on a rampage."
It is fitting that a new musical version of Tales of the City, starring Betty Buckley, will workshop at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in June, with music and lyrics by Jake Shears and John Garden of the Scissor Sisters.
"I realised I'd written a love story 30 years ago that made sense to me now," Maupin said.
He said that he looks for "some sort of validation" in his life as a writer. "I tell my worst secrets in fiction. Then I feel less alone because of the response I get from people," he said.
Maupin recalled how he had a "gay quota" of characters he was allowed to insert into his newspaper column.
"At one point I had a character wake up and discover a dog humping her leg, and I argued the dog should be placed in the heterosexual quota," Maupin said.
There was, however, a serious undertone for the gay activist as he spoke of the angst he felt when deciding to come out to his friends and family. He first uttered the words "I think I am homosexual" to a good female friend - on whom he based the character Mary Ann Singleton. Her response? " Big fucking deal."
He said his friend's support, and the burgeoning gay culture of San Francisco in the mid-70s, emboldened him to discover his identity as a gay man. Maupin said he came out at the same time he as he was writing the column, and so wove in his experiences into that of his characters. Like many fiction writers, he said he "hid behind" the people he created.
"I disguise myself in my characters. I point out people's similarities while describing their differences," he said.
"As a writer, your job is empathy. You have to inhabit everyone."
This is exactly what Maupin has done with feisty Mary Ann Singleton. The last time Maupin wrote about her, Mary Ann had left the city, husband, daughter and her best friend, Michael, whom readers had come to love.
Mary Ann in Autumn tracks the now 57 year old Mary Ann down as she returns to San Francisco. She finds that everything has changed – including 28 Barbary Lane. Those she left behind have moved on. It has been called "a tale of long-lost friends and unrealized dreams, of fear and regret, of penance and redemption — and of the unshakable sense that this world we love, this life we live, this drama in which we all play a part, does indeed go by much too fast."(The New York Times, Nov 12, 2010)
"You are not always going to be young," Maupin reminded his Melbourne audience.
Evelyn Tsitas is a PhD student at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: evelyntsitas@gmail.com
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1103/S00131/tales-of-armistead-maupin.htm
Restaurant insult shocks gay author
Lindsay Murdoch
March 18, 2011
BEST-SELLING gay author Armistead Maupin says he could not believe what he heard when he and his husband Chris Turner walked into Bojangles Saloon in Alice Springs for lunch last Friday.
Turner asked a staff member if he could use the rest room.
"The guy said, 'Sorry, we don't have one in here but you can go across the street and use the public facility,'" Maupin said.
Maupin, who had used the toilet in Bojangles the day before, said he had pointed in the direction of the toilet and asked, "What's that over there?"
"The barman gave me a very pointed look and said, 'That's reserved for real men,'" said Maupin, the San Francisco-based author of nine novels, including the Tales of the City series.
"Neither of us could quite believe he said it and he actually repeated it."
Maupin, 66, told ABC radio in Alice Springs that he and his partner left the restaurant after the comment was made and reported it at a tourist information booth.
Later, a tourism official sent him an email saying the owner of Bojangles had been as "shocked as we were, and the man had extended his apologies".
A representative of Bojangles management could not be reached for comment.
Maupin said he was happy with the response from Tourism Central Australia and the incident would not make him avoid Alice Springs in the future, hinting that he might make it the backdrop for one of his future books.
He said that when he posted an account of what happened on his Facebook page, he had received many messages of support.
Some said they had contacted Bojangles to express their outrage.
"The reaction to it was quite extraordinary and it took the bad taste out of our mouths, that's the best part of it," Maupin said.
"As a gay man I look at this as progress, that there is a lot of reasonable folks out there that don't think that acceptable behaviour any more."
Despite Alice Springs's reputation as a hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble desert town, it is home to dozens of lesbian couples, some of whom proudly describe it as Australia's lesbian capital.
With saloon doors, a life-size replica of Ned Kelly and a stuffed wedge-tail eagle suspended from the ceiling, Bojangles is one of the best known restaurants in Alice Springs.
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/restaurant-insult-shocks-gay-author-20110317-1byyw.html
March 18, 2011
BEST-SELLING gay author Armistead Maupin says he could not believe what he heard when he and his husband Chris Turner walked into Bojangles Saloon in Alice Springs for lunch last Friday.
Turner asked a staff member if he could use the rest room.
"The guy said, 'Sorry, we don't have one in here but you can go across the street and use the public facility,'" Maupin said.
Maupin, who had used the toilet in Bojangles the day before, said he had pointed in the direction of the toilet and asked, "What's that over there?"
"The barman gave me a very pointed look and said, 'That's reserved for real men,'" said Maupin, the San Francisco-based author of nine novels, including the Tales of the City series.
"Neither of us could quite believe he said it and he actually repeated it."
Maupin, 66, told ABC radio in Alice Springs that he and his partner left the restaurant after the comment was made and reported it at a tourist information booth.
Later, a tourism official sent him an email saying the owner of Bojangles had been as "shocked as we were, and the man had extended his apologies".
A representative of Bojangles management could not be reached for comment.
Maupin said he was happy with the response from Tourism Central Australia and the incident would not make him avoid Alice Springs in the future, hinting that he might make it the backdrop for one of his future books.
He said that when he posted an account of what happened on his Facebook page, he had received many messages of support.
Some said they had contacted Bojangles to express their outrage.
"The reaction to it was quite extraordinary and it took the bad taste out of our mouths, that's the best part of it," Maupin said.
"As a gay man I look at this as progress, that there is a lot of reasonable folks out there that don't think that acceptable behaviour any more."
Despite Alice Springs's reputation as a hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble desert town, it is home to dozens of lesbian couples, some of whom proudly describe it as Australia's lesbian capital.
With saloon doors, a life-size replica of Ned Kelly and a stuffed wedge-tail eagle suspended from the ceiling, Bojangles is one of the best known restaurants in Alice Springs.
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/restaurant-insult-shocks-gay-author-20110317-1byyw.html
Monday, March 7, 2011
Armistead Maupin Radio Interview
The acclaimed author Armistead Maupin, creator of the 'Tales of the City' series explains why he once hated his name, now loves it and declares that the rumour it's an anagram of "a man I dreamt up" is false!
click the link for the interview
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/03/04/3155743.htm
click the link for the interview
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/03/04/3155743.htm
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Armistead Maupin in San Francisco
01 March 2011
Luke Malone
Long after establishing itself as a centre of countercultural creativity, San Francisco retains a fiercely liberal heart. US author Armistead Maupin is its number-one fan.
Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City series helped cement San Francisco’s position on the literary map. The books, which started as a serial in The San Francisco Chronicle, tell the story of naive Ohio native Mary Ann Singleton as she makes a new life for herself in the city. For many readers, the characters’ friends and neighbours formed an introduction to life in the magnetic bayside city during the swinging 1970s.
Maupin’s latest book, Mary Ann In Autumn, sees her returning from two decades in New York, to modern-day San Francisco, seeking comfort from old friends, as demons from her past collide with those of her present.
Maupin, speaking from his home office in a wooded area high above Golden Gate Park, on the eve of a visit to Australia, is excited about his latest offering and the opportunity to talk about his beloved metropolis. He, too, moved to the city from somewhere else – South Carolina, in 1971 – and never left. In his writing he made San Fran a character as integral as any other. He has been witness to the changes it has undergone, from being a drawcard for hippies, artists, gays and runaways, to the more gentrified environment of today. But the successful author is sanguine about the changes.
“It’s changed in the ways that most cities have changed,” he says. “There’s a faster pace, the traffic is worse, people are a little more harried than they used to be. But it has also improved a great deal in terms of its physical beauty.”
Along with his fellow San Franciscans, he’s been active in the city’s upkeep. “We’ve torn down freeways because we didn’t like the way they looked. We’ve renovated a number of wonderful old buildings. We’ve made the place more habitable for its residents and even more attractive for tourists.”
Now 66, Maupin says he doesn’t long for what others might see as the city’s heyday. “There’s nothing to miss. I’m sitting here in my office right now looking over the same city. If anything, I have to remind myself that time has passed because most of my adult experience has been here. I’ll sometimes ask myself who that old guy is in my reflection when I pass a shop window because, in many ways, I still feel like I’m 27 and I’ve just arrived in town.”
He concedes that the dot-com boom of the ’90s changed the urban demographic. “I’m very lucky I bought a house here 17 years ago when the market was low. I suspect if I sold my house and left town I’d never be able to afford to move back. It’s easier for people with money to live here now than young, struggling artists. I suppose that contributes somewhat to a loss of colour.”
But that doesn’t mean the city is no longer vibrant. Long after establishing itself as a bastion of countercultural creativity, it retains a fiercely liberal heart. Maupin points to the thriving and varied arts scenes. “There’s a poetry scene and we have a literary festival here called Litquake, where people travel around from bar to bar to recite poetry and drink. There’s always something interesting if you keep your eyes open. I still hear from young people who come here with a dream in their pocket and stay.”
What is it that makes San Francisco so universally loved? Other cities have equal amounts of fans and detractors; for every rapt visitor to New York or LA, another will complain about the noise or pollution. But San Francisco is a deeply comforting place.
“That character seems to be immutable,” agrees Maupin. “It’s physically beautiful, to begin with, and quite seductive. The fog rolling in from the sea and over these hills is quite magical and lends it a certain ethereal quality. It’s also a very small place. We have only about 750,000 inhabitants, so it manages to be a small town and cosmopolitan at the same time.”
Though he once had a summer home on New Zealand’s South Island – now a B&B run by his sister, Jane – Maupin and his husband, Christopher Turner, have never thought seriously about relocating. “We used to consider the suburbs because we were fantasising about a big green lawn and a place for our dog to run. But I’m not sure that would ever outweigh the beauty of living here in the heart of all this humanity.”
Armistead’s city
Thirsty: 440 Castro
440 Castro Street. +1 415 621 8732.
An easy-going neighbourhood bar with hot guys of all ages.
Grab a snack: Café de la Presse
352 Grant Avenue. +1 415 398 2680.
A charming spot near the Chinatown gate that also happens to be in the heart of our French Quarter. Yes, we have a French district! This place offers newspapers from all over the world.
Wine & dine: The Slanted Door
1 Ferry Building #3. +1 415 861 8032.
The Slanted Door specialises in cleverly updated Vietnamese food. The Shaking Beef is not to be missed. Elegant atmosphere and a great view of the harbour from the Ferry Building.
La Mar
Pier 1½. +1 415 397 8880.
A Peruvian seafood restaurant in one of the old piers (just to the left of the Ferry Building). More great views and every imaginable kind of ceviche.
Koh Samui & The Monkey
415 Brannan Street. +1 415 369 0007.
Delicious Thai food in a stunning second-floor room with big casement windows overlooking the street.
Worthwhile tourist spot: Ferry Building
1 Ferry Building. +1 415 983 8030.
Pretty much the core of all that’s wonderful on the waterfront. It has a farmers’ market and a lot of artisanal foodstuffs. Don’t miss the Cowgirl Creamery and its many delectable cheesy treats. It’s all made an hour north of the city – by cowgirls, of course.
Locals only: The Ramp
855 Terry Francois Street. +1 415 621 2378.
A great burger joint on the waterfront in a semi-industrial neighbourhood. Tourists almost never find it.
Culture vulture: The de Young Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. +1 415 750 3600.
Our new pride and joy, smack dab in the middle of Golden Gate Park. The building, resembling a giant, rusting aircraft carrier, is striking and beautiful in that green setting. The Sculpture Garden is worth exploring.
Go green: Crissy Field
1199 East Beach (Crissy Field Center). +1 415 561 7690.
Where we walk our dog on special occasions. It’s a reclaimed tidal marsh with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kids and dogs and sailboats and kites – heaven on a sunny day.
Source Qantas The Australian Way March 2011
http://travelinsider.qantas.com.au/armistead_maupin_in_san_francisco.htm
Luke Malone
Long after establishing itself as a centre of countercultural creativity, San Francisco retains a fiercely liberal heart. US author Armistead Maupin is its number-one fan.
Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City series helped cement San Francisco’s position on the literary map. The books, which started as a serial in The San Francisco Chronicle, tell the story of naive Ohio native Mary Ann Singleton as she makes a new life for herself in the city. For many readers, the characters’ friends and neighbours formed an introduction to life in the magnetic bayside city during the swinging 1970s.
Maupin’s latest book, Mary Ann In Autumn, sees her returning from two decades in New York, to modern-day San Francisco, seeking comfort from old friends, as demons from her past collide with those of her present.
Maupin, speaking from his home office in a wooded area high above Golden Gate Park, on the eve of a visit to Australia, is excited about his latest offering and the opportunity to talk about his beloved metropolis. He, too, moved to the city from somewhere else – South Carolina, in 1971 – and never left. In his writing he made San Fran a character as integral as any other. He has been witness to the changes it has undergone, from being a drawcard for hippies, artists, gays and runaways, to the more gentrified environment of today. But the successful author is sanguine about the changes.
“It’s changed in the ways that most cities have changed,” he says. “There’s a faster pace, the traffic is worse, people are a little more harried than they used to be. But it has also improved a great deal in terms of its physical beauty.”
Along with his fellow San Franciscans, he’s been active in the city’s upkeep. “We’ve torn down freeways because we didn’t like the way they looked. We’ve renovated a number of wonderful old buildings. We’ve made the place more habitable for its residents and even more attractive for tourists.”
Now 66, Maupin says he doesn’t long for what others might see as the city’s heyday. “There’s nothing to miss. I’m sitting here in my office right now looking over the same city. If anything, I have to remind myself that time has passed because most of my adult experience has been here. I’ll sometimes ask myself who that old guy is in my reflection when I pass a shop window because, in many ways, I still feel like I’m 27 and I’ve just arrived in town.”
He concedes that the dot-com boom of the ’90s changed the urban demographic. “I’m very lucky I bought a house here 17 years ago when the market was low. I suspect if I sold my house and left town I’d never be able to afford to move back. It’s easier for people with money to live here now than young, struggling artists. I suppose that contributes somewhat to a loss of colour.”
But that doesn’t mean the city is no longer vibrant. Long after establishing itself as a bastion of countercultural creativity, it retains a fiercely liberal heart. Maupin points to the thriving and varied arts scenes. “There’s a poetry scene and we have a literary festival here called Litquake, where people travel around from bar to bar to recite poetry and drink. There’s always something interesting if you keep your eyes open. I still hear from young people who come here with a dream in their pocket and stay.”
What is it that makes San Francisco so universally loved? Other cities have equal amounts of fans and detractors; for every rapt visitor to New York or LA, another will complain about the noise or pollution. But San Francisco is a deeply comforting place.
“That character seems to be immutable,” agrees Maupin. “It’s physically beautiful, to begin with, and quite seductive. The fog rolling in from the sea and over these hills is quite magical and lends it a certain ethereal quality. It’s also a very small place. We have only about 750,000 inhabitants, so it manages to be a small town and cosmopolitan at the same time.”
Though he once had a summer home on New Zealand’s South Island – now a B&B run by his sister, Jane – Maupin and his husband, Christopher Turner, have never thought seriously about relocating. “We used to consider the suburbs because we were fantasising about a big green lawn and a place for our dog to run. But I’m not sure that would ever outweigh the beauty of living here in the heart of all this humanity.”
Armistead’s city
Thirsty: 440 Castro
440 Castro Street. +1 415 621 8732.
An easy-going neighbourhood bar with hot guys of all ages.
Grab a snack: Café de la Presse
352 Grant Avenue. +1 415 398 2680.
A charming spot near the Chinatown gate that also happens to be in the heart of our French Quarter. Yes, we have a French district! This place offers newspapers from all over the world.
Wine & dine: The Slanted Door
1 Ferry Building #3. +1 415 861 8032.
The Slanted Door specialises in cleverly updated Vietnamese food. The Shaking Beef is not to be missed. Elegant atmosphere and a great view of the harbour from the Ferry Building.
La Mar
Pier 1½. +1 415 397 8880.
A Peruvian seafood restaurant in one of the old piers (just to the left of the Ferry Building). More great views and every imaginable kind of ceviche.
Koh Samui & The Monkey
415 Brannan Street. +1 415 369 0007.
Delicious Thai food in a stunning second-floor room with big casement windows overlooking the street.
Worthwhile tourist spot: Ferry Building
1 Ferry Building. +1 415 983 8030.
Pretty much the core of all that’s wonderful on the waterfront. It has a farmers’ market and a lot of artisanal foodstuffs. Don’t miss the Cowgirl Creamery and its many delectable cheesy treats. It’s all made an hour north of the city – by cowgirls, of course.
Locals only: The Ramp
855 Terry Francois Street. +1 415 621 2378.
A great burger joint on the waterfront in a semi-industrial neighbourhood. Tourists almost never find it.
Culture vulture: The de Young Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. +1 415 750 3600.
Our new pride and joy, smack dab in the middle of Golden Gate Park. The building, resembling a giant, rusting aircraft carrier, is striking and beautiful in that green setting. The Sculpture Garden is worth exploring.
Go green: Crissy Field
1199 East Beach (Crissy Field Center). +1 415 561 7690.
Where we walk our dog on special occasions. It’s a reclaimed tidal marsh with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kids and dogs and sailboats and kites – heaven on a sunny day.
Source Qantas The Australian Way March 2011
http://travelinsider.qantas.com.au/armistead_maupin_in_san_francisco.htm
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