Adrienne Barbeau: actress, sex symbol, writer - Armenian Reporter

The Den of Geek interview: Adrienne Barbeau
The formidable star of
Escape From New York and
other cult classics chats
with DoG about writing,
bats, therapy, and kicking
ass...
by Martin Anderson
Editor’s note: We are reprinting this interview
with permission from Den of Geek,
the British online entertainment magazine
which published the piece earlier this
month.
Adrienne Barbeau negotiated a successful
Broadway career – during which
she originated the role of Rizzo in Grease
- into a successful television career in the
1970s on the hit comedy Maude. A meeting
with John Carpenter, who was casting
his acclaimed TV thriller Someone’s
Watching Me, led to a role, marriage,
their son Cody, and yet another career
as an acclaimed “Scream Queen” in the
likes of The Fog, Creepshow, Swamp Thing,
Two Evil Eyes, and Escape From New York.
Following the acclaim of her 2006
memoirs There Are Worse Things I Could
Do, Adrienne has now written a horror
novel together with author Michael
Scott, in which heroine Ovsana Moore is
a rather Barbeau-esque actress... who is
also a vampire! The novel follows her efforts
in concert with an LAPD detective
to find the serial killer who is slaying the
“A-list” stars of Hollywood...
[N.b.: Vampyres of Hollywood did not
arrive on my desk until four hours before
this interview took place, so I had
only read the early chapters at the time
- M.A.]
Martin Anderson: Is Vampyres of
Hollywood the first time that you’ve really
looked for that creative voice inside
yourself
Adrienne Barbeau: It’s the first time
I’ve applied it to fiction, yes. I guess I
found a voice when I was doing There
Are Worse Things I Could Do, and tried to
bring it into this one as much as I could.
M.A.: You seem like a really social person,
so how does the writing life suit
you
A.B.: There’s a part of it that I love,
and some of that is not being dependent
upon anyone else for my creativity.
I don’t have to wait for the script to
come, I don’t have to wait for the offer
to come in or for the money to be raised
[laughs]. So it’s wonderful just to be able
to get up in the morning and get the
kids to school, and then come back and
sit down and try to fashion something
that didn’t exist before. Because there’s
so much else that I have to do in terms of
being a mom and continuing my acting
career and all of that, I don’t sit at the
computer for days on end without talking
to other people. We have a house at
the New Jersey shore, and we’re here for
about five weeks - my husband has been
loving enough and gracious enough to
take the kids on some four-day field trips
[laughs]. They’ve gone off to Boston, so
Adrienna Barbeau: “I never set out to be a sex symbol.”
I am able to just get up and sit down
and just write straight through - but I’m
able to balance the communication with
other people with the communication
with the computer [laughs].
M.A.: So you’re developing your own
routines
A.B.: Yeah, I guess I am. It’s still new
enough to me that I don’t trust how
much time I can take away from it, if
you know what I mean. So if my husband
says “So-and-so’s having a party
on Friday night and I think we should
go,” I tend to think “I don’t know - how
many words am I gonna get written
this week” [laughs]. So I worked out a
monthly deadline and when I get there
and realize that I’ve written as much as
I’m supposed to have written, then okay
- I can go off and go shopping.
M.A.: Many writers say that they
surprise themselves at what they come
up with when they’re writing - has that
been your experience That you have access
to creative resources that you can’t
normally get to
A.B.: Yes, it has, and the way I would
explain it is that I’ll go back maybe 60
or 70 pages, or back to the beginning or
whatever, and I’m reading through it and
I find myself thinking “Did I write that”
[laughs]. Where did that come from Out
of me There are other times when I’ve
written something and I think “Oh, that
works,” and I’m sorta proud of that. But
even as I’m aware of that, I’m also aware
that it wasn’t anything that I thought of
before I put my fingers on the computer.
And it’s really fascinating.
M.A.: You’ve said that you didn’t turn
to George Romero or John Carpenter
before the novel was completed. So was
the feedback loop during the writing
process between you and Michael Scott,
or was there someone else to turn to
A.B.: Hmmm... I don’t want to get
confused between the first one and the
second one, which I’m writing all by myself.
That one I have definitely shown
to my husband and I have two other
friends, both of whom are writers, that
I’ve sent chapters to, asking “Am I still
on track” - that kind of thing. Vampyres
Of Hollywood I’m sure I showed to Billy -
my husband - but I don’t think I showed
it to anyone else as I was going along. I
think there was one night when I got
together with a bunch of girlfriends
[laughs] and I read the opening pages so
that they’d know what I was doing.
With Vampyres, Michael and I were
bouncing it back and forth. He’s an
expert at these things, and that was
enough - except for my husband.
M.A.: Speaking of the opening pages,
which I’ve read – “Death By Oscar’ [in
which a deplorable actor who has just
won an Academy Award is found dead in
a taxi with the statuette shoved up his
rectum]... – man, that’s a nasty death!
[Adrienne laughs]. Is this maybe a case
of having a little bit of payback on one or
two real characters from your own life
A.B.: I hadn’t thought of that part
of it being a case of getting revenge! I
have a feeling that if I go back and look
at it, there’s probably a few things in
there... [laughs]. I hadn’t really realized
this about being a writer, but a friend of
mine told me that another well-known
author has always said to her “I’m the
Goddess! I can do anything I want!” I’m
just coming to realize that. If there’s a
book I like that I’m reading, I can have
my character read that book, and I can
give that author a boost. And that’s
great fun.
M.A.: But it’s quite therapeutic as well
as creative
A.B.: I think so. You know, because
you read the memoirs, that I’m not looking
to drag too many people over the
coals [laughs], but it’s fun to be able to
get those little details in there that some
people will recognize.
M.A.: There’s a nice division in the
book between Ovsana’s voice and the
detective’s voice - is that how the work
divided between yourself and Michael
Scott in practical terms
A.B.: No, actually - the voice is a
real amalgam of the two of us. I think
that the final chapters, the battle and
the monsters and the Vampyrs and the
Weres, more of that came out of Michael.
We sat down and outlined the
whole thing together, in the same room,
saying that this was where we wanted
to go and this was what we wanted to
have happen. The structure of it is really
Michael - he wrote the first draft of the
chapter and then he sent it to me and
said “This is your book, just do whatever
you want with it.”
So the voice, the actual words on the
paper... the voice is more mine. The dialogue,
the way they speak - that’s more
me. But when we went back over it, we
both agreed that we couldn’t tell where
I had left off and he had picked up and
vice versa. I had to look something up
the other day and I thought “Is that in
Michael’s first draft or mine” I couldn’t
figure it out. We really found a way to
blend the two, I think.
M.A.: Ovsana seems like a melding of
all the roles that you’re loved for, like in
Escape From New York, Swamp Thing, and
The Fog... surely there’s got to be a film,
and you’ve got to play her.
A.B.: [Laughs]. Well, I think she looks
younger than I do! Well, you haven’t read
it all the way through yet. But maybe I
can play the villainess at the end - who
looks like Betty Davis as Baby Jane Hudson
in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane!
C6 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture July 12, 2008