The Believer has a fascinating interview by Suzanne Snider with Lawrence Schiller, a writer, researcher, photographer and director. He has collaborated with several well-known writers, including Norman Mailer, providing them with huge amounts of research on which to base a book. He provided Mailer with more than 15,000 pages of notes, interviews, and transcripts that the author used to write "The Executioner's Song," the story of murderer Gary Gilmore (Schiller owns half the copyright).
A few tidbits from Schiller's interview:
ON PHOTOGRAPHY:
I never considered myself a good photographer. I still don’t. I thought of myself as a hard worker. My camera was a sponge and I had an instinct that athletes have—anticipation. Photography really represents an enormous amount of anticipation—understanding what might be there the next moment and being prepared for it.
ON COMING UP WITH BIG IDEAS AND COLLABORATION:
By 1972, I’m conceiving major projects… beginning with an exhibit of twenty-four photographers’ works of Marilyn Monroe. I said to a publisher, “Get me Gloria Steinem or Norman Mailer to write the text and you’ll have the cover of Life and Time magazines the same week.” Of course, they got me Norman Mailer...It was not unusual for me after 1969 to seek out the most important writers I could to write books based on my ideas, my research, my interviews. Many people know of my relationship with Norman, because he decided to reveal it. I wasn’t interested in revealing it. There are many, many other famous writers that I have worked with.
ON HIS CREATIVE AND MARKETING PROCESS:
First, find a story that has depth and general appeal. Pray you can find a writer who has the same interests as you do. Second, once you have a finished manuscript and, if you’re lucky, a best seller, you go looking for the right screenwriter. Third, with a good screenplay you have a movie.
ON INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES:
When you’re being interviewed or you’re interviewing somebody else, you always have your voice two or three octaves lower than the other person’s voice. That produces a certain ambience, OK? Which is very powerful, OK? And that was taught to me by a great great lawyer called Edward Bennett Williams in Washington, D.C., when I was very young.
ON CHANGE AND WISDOM:
I’ve been married three and a half times, so I changed my life four times. I reinvented myself four times. So each morning brings a little wisdom, and then you find out how stupid you were for most of your life.
One of Schiller's current projects is running Norman Mailer's former home as a writers' colony. The full interview is here.
