Sam Shepard, e Art of eater No.

Interviewed by Benjamin Ryder Howe, Jeanne McCulloch, and Mona Simpson

ISSUE 142, SPRING 1997

is interview was conducted over several days in the living room of a Manhattan
apartment by the East River. For the last meeting Sam Shepard arrived at the end of a
late-a ernoon snowstorm, his leather jacket unbuttoned in spite of the bad weather.
He immediately became distracted by an out-of-tune Steinway in the corner, then
returned to the couch for a discussion of his recently completed yearlong retrospective
at New York’s Signature eater. He said he had been exhausted by the theater’s
rehearsals, by a trip to London the previous week, and by a hectic schedule of public
readings. Nevertheless, at the end of the meeting he declined to be driven back to his
Midtown hotel, saying he would rather walk back through Central Park instead.
Like many writers, Shepard is easy to imagine as one of the characters in his own
work. In person, he is closer to the laconic and inarticulate men of his plays than to his
movie roles. Self-contained, with none of the bearing of an actor, he retains a desert
California accent and somehow seems smaller than one expects.
He was born on November , , on an army base in southern Illinois where his
father was stationed. He attended high schools in the Southwest, spent a year in junior
college studying agricultural science, then moved to New York with designs on an
acting career. In New York he quickly found an interest in writing, which brought him
to the emerging world of avant-garde theater on the Lower East Side. A succession of
award-winning plays followed: Chicago, Icarus’s Mother, Red Cross, La Turista, and
Forensic and the Navigators all won Obie Awards in the o - and o -o -Broadway
categories between and . During this time he was also aided by grants from
the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations.
In the early seventies Shepard moved to England, where he began raising a family
and writing for the London theatrical scene. e period produced a number of well-
received medium-length plays, including Tooth of Crime and Geography of a Horse
Dreamer. In he returned to California, where he had lived as a teenager, and
began writing his best-known plays—Curse of the Starving Class, Fool for Lo e, and the
Pulitzer Prize–winning Buried Child. He made his feature- lm debut in playing
an a uent farmer in Days of Heaven. ough that role brought him numerous o ers
to continue acting, Shepard has deliberately limited himself to a few movies because,
as he says, “the work just isn’t that much fun.” Nevertheless, in he received an
Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in e Right Stu . at
year he also received the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Paris, Texas, which
he wrote and acted in.
Shepard lives in Minnesota with the actress Jessica Lange and their two children.

I N T E RV I EWE R
 e West gures predominantly as a mythology in many of your plays. You grew up
there, didn’t you?

S A M S H E PA R D
All over the Southwest, really—Cucamonga, Duarte, California, Texas, New Mexico.
My dad was a pilot in the air force. A er the war he got a Fulbright fellowship, spent a
little time in Colombia, then taught high-school Spanish. He kind of moved us from
place to place.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you think you’ll ever live in the West again?

S H E PA R D
No, I don’t think so. e California I knew, old rancho California, is gone. It just
doesn’t exist, except maybe in little pockets. I lived on the edge of the Mojave Desert,
an area that used to be farm country. ere were all these fresh-produce stands with
avocados and date palms. You could get a dozen artichokes for a buck or something.
Totally wiped out now.

I N T E RV I EWE R
True West, Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, and Lie of the Mind are all family
dramas, albeit absurdist ones. Have you drawn a lot from your own family?

S H E PA R D
Yes, though less now than I used to. Most of it comes, I guess, from my dad’s side of the
family. ey’re a real bizarre bunch, going back to the original colonies. at side’s got
a real tough strain of alcoholism. It goes back generations and generations, so that you
can’t remember when there was a sober grandfather.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Have you struggled with drinking?

S H E PA R D
My history with booze goes back to high school. Back then there was a lot of
Benzedrine around, and since we lived near the Mexican border I’d just run over, get a
bag of bennies and drink ripple wine. Speed and booze together make you quite . . .
omnipotent. You don’t feel any pain. I was actually in several car wrecks that I don’t
understand how I survived.
At any rate, for a long time I didn’t think I had a problem. Alcoholism is an
insidious disease; until I confronted it I wasn’t aware that it was creeping up on me. I
nally did AA in the hardcore down on Pico Boulevard. I said, “Don’t put me in with
Elton John or anything, just throw me to the lions.”

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you feel like the drinking might have aided your writing?
 S H E PA R D
I didn’t feel like one inspired the other, or vice versa. I certainly never saw booze or
drugs as a partner to writing. at was just the way my life was tending, you know, and
the writing was something I did when I was relatively straight. I never wrote on drugs,
or the bourbon.

I N T E RV I EWE R
You said the men on your dad’s side of the family were hard drinkers. Is this why the
mothers in your plays always seem to be caught in the middle of so much havoc?

S H E PA R D
ose Midwestern women from the forties su ered an incredible psychological
assault, mainly by men who were disappointed in a way that they didn’t understand.
While growing up I saw that assault over and over again, and not only in my own
family. ese were men who came back from the war, had to settle down, raise a family
and send the kids to school—and they just couldn’t handle it. ere was something
outrageous about it. I still don’t know what it was—maybe living through those
adventures in the war and then having to come back to suburbia. Anyway, the women
took it on the nose, and it wasn’t like they said, Hey Jack, you know, down the road,
I’m leaving. ey sat there and took it. I think there was a kind of heroism in those
women. ey were tough and sel ess in a way. What they sacri ced at the hands of
those maniacs . . .

I N T E RV I EWE R
What was your dad like?

S H E PA R D
He was also a maniac, but in a very quiet way. I had a falling-out with him at a
relatively young age by the standards of that era. We were always butting up against
each other, never seeing eye-to-eye on anything, and as I got older it escalated into a
really bad, violent situation. Eventually I just decided to get out.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Is he alive?

S H E PA R D
No, a couple of years ago he was killed coming out of a bar in New Mexico. I saw him
the year before he died. Our last meeting slipped into this gear where I knew it was
going to turn really nasty. I remember forcing myself, for some reason, not to ip out. I
don’t know why I made that decision, but I ended up leaving without coming back at
him. He was boozed up, very violent and crazy. A er that I didn’t see him for a long
time. I did try to track him down; a friend of his told me he got a haircut, a shing
license, and a bottle, and then took o for the Pecos River. at was the last I heard of
him before he died. He turned up a year later in New Mexico, with some woman I
guess he was running with. ey had a big blowout in a bar, and he went out in the
street and got run over.
 I N T E RV I EWE R
Did he ever see one of your plays?

S H E PA R D
Yes. ere’s a really bizarre story about that. He found out about a production of
Buried Child that was going on at the Greer Garson eater in New Mexico. He went
to the show smashed, just pickled, and in the middle of the play he began to identify
with some character, though I’m not sure which one, since all those characters are kind
of loosely structured around his family. In the second act he stood up and started to
carry on with the actors, and then yelled, “What a bunch of shit this is!” e ushers
tried to throw him out. He resisted, and in the end they allowed him to stay because
he was the father of the playwright.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Were you there?

S H E PA R D
No, I just heard about it. I think that’s the only time he ever saw a production.
You know, all that stu about my father and my childhood is interesting up to a
certain point, but I kind of capsized with the family drama a long time ago. Now I
want to get away from that. Not that I won’t return to it, but a certain element has
been exhausted, and it feels like why regurgitate all this stu ?

I N T E RV I EWE R
I read somewhere that you started writing because you wanted to be a musician.

S H E PA R D
Well, I got to New York when I was eighteen. I was knocking around, trying to be an
actor, writer, musician, whatever happened.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What sort of musician were you trying to be?

S H E PA R D
A drummer. I was in a band called the Holy Modal Rounders.

I N T E RV I EWE R
How did you end up in New York?

S H E PA R D
A er the falling out with my father I worked on a couple of ranches—thoroughbred
layup farms, actually—out toward Chino, California. at was ne for a little while,
but I wanted to get out completely, and twenty miles away wasn’t far enough. So I got
a job delivering papers in Pasadena, and pretty soon, by reading the ad sections, I
found out about an opening with a traveling ensemble called e Bishop’s Company. I
decided to give it a shot, thinking that this might be a way to really get out. At the
audition they gave me a little Shakespeare thing to read—I was so scared I read the
stage directions—and then they hired me. I think they hired everybody.
We traveled all over the country—New England, the South, the Midwest. I think
the longest we stayed in one place was two days. It was actually a great little fold-up
theater. We were totally self-su cient—we put up the lights, made the costumes,
performed the play, and shut down. Anyway, one day we got to New York to do a
production at a church in Brooklyn and I said, I’m getting o the bus.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Did you start right in?

S H E PA R D
Not immediately. My rst job was with the Burns Detective Agency. ey sent me
over to the East River to guard coal barges during these god-awful hours like three to
six in the morning. It wasn’t a very di cult job—all I had to do was make a round
every een minutes—but it turned out to be a great environment for writing. I was
completely alone in a little outhouse with an electric heater and a little desk.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Did you already think of yourself as a writer?

S H E PA R D
I’d been messing around with it for a while, but nothing serious. at was the rst time
I felt writing could actually be useful.

I N T E RV I EWE R
How did you hook up with the theaters?

S H E PA R D
Well, I was staying on Avenue C and Tenth Street with a bunch of jazz musicians, one
of whom happened to be Charlie Mingus’s son. We knew each other from high school,
and he got me a job as a busboy at the Village Gate. e headwaiter at the Gate was a
guy named Ralph Cook. Ralph was just starting his theater at St. Mark’s in the
Bowery, and he said he’d heard that I’d been writing some stu , and he wanted to see
it. So, I showed him a few plays I’d written, and he said, Well, let’s do it. ings kind of
took o from there. New York was like that in the sixties. You could write a one-act
play and start doing it the next day. You could go to one of those theaters—Genesis,
La Mama, Judson Poets—and nd a way to get it done. Nothing like that exists now.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Did o -o -Broadway plays get reviewed back then?

S H E PA R D
For a while the big papers wouldn’t touch them, but then they started to smell
something, so they came down and wrote these snide reviews. ey weren’t being
unfair. A lot of that stu really was shitty and deserved to get bombed. But there was
one guy who was sort of on our side. His name was Michael Smith; he worked for e
Village Voice, and he gave a glowing review to these little one-act plays, Cowboys and
e Rock Garden. I remember that distinctly, not because of the praise but because it
felt like somebody nally understood what we were trying to do. He was actually
hooking up with us, seeing the work for what it was.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What were the audiences like?

S H E PA R D
ey were incredibly di erent. You really felt that the community came to see the
plays. ey weren’t people coming from New Jersey to have a dinner party. And they
weren’t going to sit around if they got bored. e most hostile audience I faced was up
at the American Place eatre when we were putting on La Turista. ey invited all
these Puerto Rican kids, street kids, and they were ring at the actors with
peashooters.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Did it take a long time to nd your particular voice as a writer?

S H E PA R D
I was amazed, actually. I’ve heard writers talk about “discovering a voice,” but for me
that wasn’t a problem. ere were so many voices that I didn’t know where to start. It
was splendid, really; I felt kind of like a weird stenographer. I don’t mean to make it
sound like hallucination, but there were de nitely things there, and I was just putting
them down. I was fascinated by how they structured themselves, and it seemed like the
natural place to do it was on a stage. A lot of the time when writers talk about their
voice they’re talking about a narrative voice. For some reason my attempts at narrative
turned out really weird. I didn’t have that kind of voice, but I had a lot of other ones,
so I thought, Well, I’ll follow those.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you feel like you’re in control of those voices now?

S H E PA R D
I don’t feel insane, if that’s what you’re asking.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What is your schedule like?

S H E PA R D
I have to begin early because I take the kids to school, so usually I’m awake by six. I
come back to the house a erwards and work till lunch.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you have any rituals or devices to help you get started?

S H E PA R D
No, not really. I mean there’s the co ee and that bullshit, but as for rituals, no.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What sort of writing situation do you have at home? Do you have an o ce?

S H E PA R D
I’ve got a room out by the barn with a typewriter, a piano, some photographs, and old
drawings. Lots of junk and old books. I can’t seem to get rid of my books.

I N T E RV I EWE R
So, you’re not a word-processor person.

S H E PA R D
No, I hate green screens. e paper is important to me.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What sort of country is it where you live?

S H E PA R D
Farm country—you know, hay, horses, cattle. It’s the ideal situation for me. I like the
physical endeavors that go with the farm—cutting hay, cleaning out stalls, or building
a barn. You go do that and then come back to the writing.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you write every day?

S H E PA R D
When something kicks in, I devote everything to it and write constantly until it’s
nished. But to sit down every day and say, I’m going to write, come hell or high water
—no, I could never do that.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Can you write when you’re acting in a lm?

S H E PA R D
ere are certain attitudes that shut everything down. It’s very easy, for example, to get
a bad attitude from a movie. I mean you’re trapped in a trailer, people are pounding on
the door, asking if you’re ready, and at the same time you’re trying to write.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you actually write on the set?
 S H E PA R D
Film locations are a great opportunity to write. I don’t work on plays while I’m
shooting a movie, but I’ve done short stories and a couple of novels.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What was it like the rst time you saw your work being performed by actors?

S H E PA R D
To a certain extent it was frustrating, because the actors were in control of the material
and I wasn’t used to actors. I didn’t know how to talk to them and I didn’t want to
learn, so I hid behind the director. But slowly I started to realize that they were going
through an interpretive process, just like anyone else. ey don’t just go in there and
read the script.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Did becoming an actor help you as a writer?

S H E PA R D
It did, because it helped me to understand what kinds of dilemmas an actor faces.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Were you impressed by any particular school, like Method acting?

S H E PA R D
I am not a Strasberg fanatic. In fact, I nd it incredibly self-indulgent. I’ve seen actors
come through it because they’re strong people themselves, because they’re able to use it
and go on, but I’ve also seen actors absolutely destroyed by it, which is painful to see. It
has to do with this voodoo that’s all about the veri cation of behavior, so that I become
the character. It’s not true Stanislavsky. He was on a di erent mission, and I think
Strasberg bastardized him in a way that verges on psychosis. You forget about the
material, you forget that this is a play, you forget that it’s for the audience. Hey, man,
I’m in my private little world. What you talkin’ about? I’m over here, I’m in ol ed with
the lemons. On lm, of course, it works because of its obsessiveness; but in theater it’s a
complete block and a hindrance. ere’s no room for self-indulgence in theater; you
have to be thinking about the audience. Joe Chaikin helped me understand this. He
used to have this rehearsal exercise in which the actors were supposed to play a scene
for some imaginary gure in the audience. He would say, Tonight Prince Charles is in
the audience. Play the scene for him. Or, Tonight a bag lady is in the audience.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Is it true that you wrote Simpatico in a truck?

S H E PA R D
Well, I started it in a truck. I don’t like ying very much, so I tend to drive a lot, and
I’ve always wanted to nd a way to write while I’m on the open road. I wrote on the
steering wheel.
 I N T E RV I EWE R
Really? What highway were you on?

S H E PA R D
West, the straightest one. I was going to Los Angeles. I think I wrote twenty- ve
pages by the time I got there, which was about ve hundred miles of driving. ere
were these two characters I’d been thinking about for quite a while, and when I got to
L.A. it seemed like I had a one-act play. en another character popped up; suddenly
there were two acts. And out of that second act, a third. It took me a year to nish it.

I N T E RV I EWE R
How do you decide that a play is nished?

S H E PA R D
e only way to test it is with actors, because that’s who you’re writing for. When I
have a piece of writing that I think might be ready, I test it with actors, and then I see if
it’s what I imagined it to be. e best actors show you the aws in the writing. ey
come to a certain place and there’s nothing there, or they read a line and say, OK, now
what? at kind of questioning is more valuable than anything. ey don’t have to say
anything. With the very best actors I can see it in the way they’re preceding.
Sometimes I instinctively know that this little part at the end of scene two, act one is
not quite there, but I say to myself, Maybe we’ll get away with it. A good actor won’t
let me. Not that he says, Hey, I can’t do this; I just see that he’s stumbling. And then I
have to face up to the problem.

I N T E RV I EWE R
So, as you write, your thoughts are with the actors, not the audience.

S H E PA R D
Well, no. I don’t think you can write a play without thinking of the audience, but it’s a
funny deal, because I never know who the audience is. It’s like a ghost. With movies
you have a better notion of who’s watching; there it’s the whole population.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you do a lot of revisions?

S H E PA R D
More now than I used to. I used to be just dead set against revisions because I couldn’t
stand rewriting. at changed when I started working with Chaikin. Joe was so
persistent about nding the essence of something. He’d say, Does this mean what we’re
trying to make it mean? Can it be constructed some other way? at fascinated me,
because my tendency was to jam, like it was jazz or something. elonius Monk style.

I N T E RV I EWE R
How do your plays start? Do you hear the voice of a character?
 S H E PA R D
It’s more of an attitude than a voice. With Simpatico, for instance, it was these two
guys in completely di erent predicaments who began to talk to each other, one in one
attitude and the other in another.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do your characters always tell you where to go?

S H E PA R D
e characters are de nitely informing you, telling you where they want to go. Each
time you get to a crossroads you know there are possibilities. at itself can be a
dilemma, though. Several times I’ve written a play that seemed absolutely on the
money up to a certain point, and then all of a sudden it went way le eld. When that
happens you really have to bring it back to the point where it diverged and try
something else.

I N T E RV I EWE R
On the subject of control, Nabokov, for one, spoke of controlling his characters with a
very tight rein.

S H E PA R D
Yeah, but I think the whole notion of control is very nebulous. I mean, what kind of
control do you have, Vladimir? Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a magni cent writer.
I just question the whole notion of control.

I N T E RV I EWE R
e monologue has become something of a Shepard trademark. You are famous for
your breathtaking ones, which you’ve referred to as arias.

S H E PA R D
Originally the monologues were mixed up with the idea of an aria. But then I realized
that what I’d written was extremely di cult for actors. I mean, I was writing
monologues that were three or four pages long. Now it’s more about elimination, but
the characters still sometimes move into other states of mind, you know, without any
excuses. Something lights up and the expression expands.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What was the genesis of Fool for Lo e? Your plays don’t o en have a male and a female
character in con ict like that.

S H E PA R D
e play came out of falling in love. It’s such a dumbfounding experience. In one way
you wouldn’t trade it for the world. In another way it’s absolute hell. More than
anything, falling in love causes a certain female thing in a man to manifest, oddly
enough.
 I N T E RV I EWE R
Did you know when you started Fool for Lo e that the father would play such an
important role?

S H E PA R D
No. I was desperately looking for an ending when he came into the story. at play
ba es me. I love the opening, in the sense that I couldn’t get enough of this thing
between Eddie and May, I just wanted that to go on and on and on. But I knew that
was impossible. One way out was to bring the father in.
I had mixed feelings about it when I nished. Part of me looks at Fool for Lo e and
says, is is great, and part of me says, is is really corny. is is a quasirealistic
melodrama. It’s still not satisfying; I don’t think the play really found itself.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you have any idea what the end of play is going to be when you begin?

S H E PA R D
I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are de nitely the most exciting, middles
are perplexing and endings are a disaster.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Why?

S H E PA R D
e temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a
terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? e most authentic endings
are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. at’s genius.
Somebody told me once that fugue means to ee, so that Bach’s melody lines are like
he’s running away.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Maybe that’s why jazz appeals to you, because it doesn’t have any endings, the music
just trails away.

S H E PA R D
Possibly. It’s hard, you know, because of the nature of a play.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Have you ever tried to back up from a good ending? Start with one in mind and work
backwards?

S H E PA R D
Evidently that’s what Raymond Chandler did, but he was a mystery writer. He said he
always started out knowing who did the murder. To me there’s something false about
an ending. I mean, because of the nature of a play, you have to end it. People have to go
home.

I N T E RV I EWE R
e endings of True West and Buried Child, for example, seem more resolved than, say,
Angel City.

S H E PA R D
Really? I can’t even remember how Angel City ends.

I N T E RV I EWE R
e green slime comes through the window.

S H E PA R D
Ah, yes. When in doubt, bring on the goo and slime.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What is it you have in mind when you think of the audience?

S H E PA R D
You don’t want to create boredom, and it becomes an easy trap for a writer to fall into.
You have to keep the audience awake in very simple terms. It’s easy in the theater to
create boredom—easier than it is in movies. You put something in motion and it has
to have momentum. If you don’t do that right away, there isn’t any attention.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you have a secret for doing that?

S H E PA R D
You begin to learn an underlying rhythmic sense in which things are shi ing all the
time. ese shi s create the possibility for the audience to attach their attention. at
sounds like a mechanical process, but in a way it’s inherent in dialogue. ere’s a kind
of dialogue that’s continually shi ing and moving, and each time it moves it creates
something new. ere’s also a kind of dialogue that puts you to sleep. One is alive and
the other’s deadly. It could be just the shi s of attitudes, the shi s of ideas, where one
line is sent out and another one comes back. Shi s are something Joe Chaikin taught
me. He had a knack for marking the spot where something shi ed. An actor would be
going along, full of focus and concern, and then Joe would say, No! Shi ! Di erent!
Not the same. Sun, moon—di erent! And the actors would say to themselves, Of
course it’s di erent. Why didn’t I see that before?

I N T E RV I EWE R
Is an ear for dialogue important?

S H E PA R D
I think an ear for stage dialogue is di erent from an ear for language that’s heard in
life. You can hear things in life that don’t work at all when you try to reproduce them
onstage. It’s not the same; something changes.

I N T E RV I EWE R
What changes?

S H E PA R D
It’s being listened to in a direct way, like something overheard. It’s not voyeuristic, not
like I’m in the other room. I’m confronted by it, and the confrontational part of
theater is the dialogue. We hear all kinds of fascinating things every day, but dialogue
has to create a life. It has to be self-sustaining. Conversation is de nitely not dialogue.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you acknowledge the in uence of playwrights like Pinter and Beckett on your
work?

S H E PA R D
e stu that had the biggest in uence on me was European drama in the sixties. at
period brought theater into completely new territory—Beckett especially, who made
American theater look like it was on crutches. I don’t think Beckett gets enough credit
for revolutionizing theater, for turning it upside down.

I N T E RV I EWE R
How were you a ected by winning the Pulitzer Prize?

S H E PA R D
You know, in a lot of ways I feel like it was given to the wrong play. Buried Child is a
clumsy, cumbersome play. I think A Lie of the Mind is a much better piece of work. It’s
denser, more intricate, better constructed.

I N T E RV I EWE R
Do you have a favorite among your plays?

S H E PA R D
I’ll tell you, I’m not attached to any of it. I don’t regret them, but for me it’s much
more thrilling to move on to the next thing.