Checking In with Joan

FEELING A BIT PERPLEXED at the state of the world these days, I decided to call up the smartest woman I know.

Joan Tewkesbury danced on Broadway in Peter Pan. She wrote the screenplay to Robert Altman’s Nashville. She’s lived a great American life, and after eight decades or so, she surprised us all by whipping out a new novel, Julio Robolo Opens the Door To His Mouth. In the novel, one of the characters writes a Partial List of Disappointments:

I am disappointed that I am disappointed.

I am disappointed that tomatoes no longer taste like tomatoes.

I am disappointed in theories of cause and effect…that if you do this or

that everything will fall into place. I am disappointed that that is bullshit.

I am disappointed with the way the barber cut my hair.

I am disappointed that if God is really God, he doesn’t do more to undo

what he’s done wrong already.

I am disappointed that there aren’t more blue flowers.

We talked with Joan for one of the first issues of Santa Fe Magazine, and it was great to check back in with her. Here’s our discussion, presented as The Joan Tewksebury Questionaire: A Master Storyteller’s Guide to Embracing Chaos.

What’s the proper response to UFOs appearing over New Jersey?

Well, the sky is conducive to that sort of thing. And as people in New Jersey are having difficulty now with everything in the sky, maybe it’s because it’s really dark for the first time and they can finally see all this. It’s up to your belief system.

What’s your current state of mind regarding politics?

I’m just watching things happen. Right now it feels like a time to be quiet, observe carefully, and keep a few notes. Though I’d like to have the defining moment of collapse. It would feel wonderful and vindicated.

When you are directing actors, either in theater or in film, the most creative part of watching that actor start with one thing and to keep watching it. What’s interesting with the physical appearance of the person in charge, is he’s beginning to believe he’s pretty good.

He’s beginning to have gravitas about himself and his black overcoat. I think now he thinks that he’s the real deal. I think he’s going for the Nobel Prize in whatever field you want to give it to him. But it’s at these moments in time and having experienced being with powerful men, often there comes a point when they overstep it.

They believe it so much.

I’m waiting for David Mamet to write Wag the Dog or something akin to that. I’m just watching something unfold. It’s a creative process, actually. It’s like watching something come to life that we’ve never experienced before.

To have accountability would be very satisfying. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, by the way.

What’s the best way to handle powerful men?

Watch them carefully.

There comes a point when they overstep. They believe it so much… With boys it’s more fun to watch because they step in bigger shit. Though girls do too – we can’t just blame the boys for this.

What’s your method for creating authentic stories?

Start with (putting on) glasses.

Any glasses. Have people write down five names, pick one, and suddenly you own those glasses. No homework allowed – the minute there’s homework, the critic interferes, and the critic says, Oh, well, I don’t know if you should do that. There’s no time for critics in my class.

Your philosophy on storytelling?

I’m like a vacuum cleaner.

When I start something, I have no idea where it’s going. I truly admire people who are storytellers. They have something important to say or reveal. And they have that capacity or that ability to tell a story in a straightforward way. I marvel, I can’t do that.

What would you tell your younger self?

Please lighten up.

When life was so tragic at age 30 that you thought you would line up the pills – except you had two kids, so you didn’t do that – what I find as I get older is the funnier it all is. I’m terribly sorry!

What makes Santa Fe special?

It’s a safe place because it’s a place of individuals, where there is this construct of family and church and all of those things. But there’s also the absurdity of… I can’t even… [breaks into laughter]. The absurdity of some of the things that are in place.

I have permission to see things that are very serious that I think are humorous and I won’t get yelled at for it.

Most surprising recent discovery?

Something happened the other day and I had to take it very seriously and I was shocked. I couldn’t turn it funny. I couldn’t turn it into this other way of moving through space. It was very enlightening.

When you are writing, how do you decide what to put in and what to take out?

I was an only child.

So your whole life was sort of watching things happen and saying to yourself, well, but what would happen if that happened instead of what’s going on now? The more you can play, the more lift there is in observation because it’s not concretized.

There’s no this is what the truth is. It’s always in play. Everything remains fluid. I go back to the actor. The best actors that you watch have this ability to never land. You think they have. No, they’ve gone. Al Pacino’s gone in this direction or Ralph Fiennes has gone in that.

To me, the film this year that is just incredibly profound is Conclave. Not only for the art direction. But it’s about possibilities. The minute that you tell me, oh, if you do this, that will happen. First of all, I know you’re lying. But you take away the possibility of, yes, that can happen, but this other thing can happen too.

I’ve worked with choreographers who were very exacting, Jerome Robbins being one. I then I worked for Robert Altman who embraced any accident that would occur.

You embrace the accidents, the alternatives.

It’s interesting when someone says, like Pina Bausch, what if we set up a sprinkler in the middle of the stage at the Brooklyn Academy and the young woman danced as the sprinkler turned around and made its own music? I mean, that’s a little extreme.

What’s the key to survival in absurd times?

Create a safe place where you can speak directly to what’s coming from your perception without having it flattened or taken away. And then laugh about it. Mostly laugh about it.

What’s your idea of perfect happiness?

Laughing.

Laughter changes the chemistry in your brain because it’s spontaneous and there’s no controlling it. And so everything gets sort of fucked up. It is a great tool to allow yourself to laugh. I mean, everyone is caught in this either in depression or sadness, or about what has just happened.

But the comics in our lives are inviting us to give it up a little bit and maybe have a giggle or two. And not get bogged down in yes, it’s terribly serious, but it’s like Springtime for Hitler. I mean, come on.

Look, you put all the people that have been nominated for the Greek chorus of what’s to come, you could not make that shit up.

What gives you pleasure these days?

Laughing.