I •
36
lust OUt
JULY b. ¿007
out
______ out
out
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out
Winning Isn't Everything
If
DAD’S
World Cuisine and Supper Club
Renowned Entertainer
Jim Chan as your host
(once voted Best Host in the city by Willamette Week)
________ r*iL
must have a thing for award-winning
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authors. I’ve been living with Oregon Book
■p
NEW OWNERSHIP. NEWLY RENOVATED, NEWLY EXPANDED MENU
Breakfast«Luneh Brunch
Fuilwbar
Hlop’dy^m a r y s
ho us
Dance to live Cabaret-Style Performances
Friday and Saturday Nights 6:30 to 9:30pm
Award winner Marc Acito for 21 years, but
that didn’t stop me from shamelessly flirting
with Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize
i n fusedïvo'd k a s
winning novelist (The Hours) and screenwriter
mimosas
(A Home at the End of the World).
Cunningham and I were together recently in
BREAKFAST BUFFET AH you can eat
New York for a screening of his new film, Evening,
Saturday and Sunday 8:30am til 3pm $6.95
’6.95 LUNCH BUFFET
Monday-Friday
But it certainly gets my attention
based on the novel by O. Henry prize-winning
»7.95 DINNER BUFFET
Monday-Thursday
author Susan Minot (with whom I haven’t flirted
• www.dadsdining.« < >m
yer). Cunningham has masterfully simplified Minot’s
8608 N Lombard in Historic St. Johns
narrative (there are 50 characters in it) while writing
vivid scenes for Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave and
Glenn Close to sink their teeth into.
After viewing the film, 1 sat down with
COME DINE AL FRESCO
a metaphor for the creative act...the fundamental
human desire to create something perfect.
Cunningham to talk about the movie and his
novels.
FS: In a similar vein, what’s with all the
ménages à trois? Were you involved with one
Nostrana
Floyd Sklaver: First off, what’s with the bak
when you were younger?
MC: Oh, when I was younger in many, but rarely
ing metaphors?
Michael Cunningham: It’s true that I’ve writ
ten two novels with prominent cakes in them.
for more than a night. 1 just think that as you start up
from one, three is the first interesting number. One
is just one; two.. .can only be symmetrical. Three gets
FS: Three.
interesting. Three can be perfectly balanced; three
MC: What was the third?
can be off-balance. Three feels dramatically interest
ing to me in a way that two does not.
FS: The Hours, A Home at the End of the
Restaurant of the "Year 2006 — ®hc (Oregonian
World and Flesh and Blood.
MC: There’s not really a prominent cake in
FS: Which character in your books is most
like you?
A Home at the End of the World.
MC: While Virginia Woolf [in The Hours] felt
g
most autobiographical, if we’re just talking in
i
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terms of the characters’ whose lives are most
outwardly like mine, they would be the white
gay guys who struggle to come to terms with
their sexuality and who fall in love very easi
ly with the wrong and the right people.
FS: You’ve said that a writer shouldn’t
adapt his own work for the screen, but what
was it like to adapt someone else’s words?
MC: It was difficult but 1 guess a more inter
esting and invigorating challenge than adapt
ing your own stuff—to take a story that’s
already been written and try to keep it true to
itself and also make it your own.
FS: Is that why you made Buddy gay [in
Floyd flirts with Michael Cunningham in New York.
Evening]?
MC: I made Buddy, let’s say, sexually
FS: Excuse me. Sissy Spacek is teaching Colin
Farrell how to bake throughout.
ambiguous; Buddy is sort of pre-gay. What he is at
that point in his life is sort of in love with everybody.
MC: Well, it’s a pie. You know, you don’t start
writing with these thoughts in mind; they just
emerge as the book starts to accumulate. I’ve
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Bloody Mary with
breakfast purchase
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always had a certain thing about women’s lives.
I mean, duh, it comes from my mother.
FS: How gorgeous is Hugh Dancy [who plays
Buddy in Evening]?
MC: My lord. He’s such a movie star. Isn’t he
fantastic? If he doesn’t become a major movie star,
there’s no justice in the world.
FS: How so?
MC: My mother was incredibly driven and
FS: So I’m out of questions, but I just want
a huge perfectionist. Everything had to be perfect,
to sit here and look at you because you’re so
perfect, perfect, which drove her and all of us kind
beautiful.
of crazy.
MC: OK, we can do that, just stare at each oth
er for a while.
FS: Like the mom in Flesh and Blood?
MC: Very much like the mother in Flesh and
Blood. And I guess when 1 grew up and started to
And that’s where our interview ended—just
before 1 became too Out Going.
write about all kinds of people, among them
633 SE Powell Blvd Portland
j 503.230.BENT
women who are trapped in lives that are a little too
small for them, cooking has always seemed like
S klaver wants to know about your event.
E-mail him at floydsldaverfiteomcast.net.
FLOYD