Quin: Your assignment is to go to Austin, attend a screening of That Evening Sun (directed by Scott Teems) and report back. Can you manage that?
How or what prompted the idea for your film and how did it evolve?
I’m an avid reader, and my heart rests well when my brain infuses it with Southern Fiction. Flannery O’Connor is tops on my list, but she’s given close chase by Thomas Wolfe (not the guy in the white suit), Walker Percy, and Breece D’J Pancake (who is from West Virginia, which is kind of its own planet, but I claim him for the South and will fight you if you say otherwise). Pancake’s “Time and Again” is the greatest short story ever written, by the way.
In the early part of this century I was beginning to discover a new batch of Southern writers, guys who, for several years now, had been taking up Flannery’s torch and hoisting it aloft, big and bright for all to see. Guys like Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, Allan Gurganus, and Tom Franklin, to name but a very few. William Gay was a part of this group, but I hadn’t yet had a chance to read him. I picked up his short story collection, “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down,” and read the title story on a short plane ride from LA to San Jose. On the tarmac I called my friend and producer, Terence Berry, with whom I’d been looking for a project to develop, and said, “I’ve found it.” Three years and several hundred financier rejections later, we got the money.
I have heard it said that there is a similarity between Southern and Russian writers. Perhaps you would like Chekhov? I’m not all that well read in either, though have spent time in the South, which is where my family is from. Alice Munro is a Canadian writer who I greatly admire.
Wow, I can’t wait to see it. Thanks for the link.
Yummy to have this new list of authors I’d like to look at. Thank you!