Writer Barry Hannah

DATE June 21, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Barry Hannah discusses his new book, "Yonder Stands
Your Orphan," his career and his battle with cancer
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest is novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah. Larry McMurtry has
called him the best fiction writer to appear in the South since Flannery
O'Connor. William Styron described Hannah as an original and one of the most
consistently exciting writers of the post-Faulkner generation. Hannah writes
about the American South. He grew up in Mississippi and has taught for many
years at the University of Mississippi. He has won the William Faulkner
Prize, been nominated for an American Book Award and was a National Book Award
finalist.

His latest novel, "Yonder Stands Your Orphan," was just published in
paperback. The title borrows a line from the Dylan song, "It's All Over Now,
Baby Blue." There are orphans and guns in the novel and plenty of evil, as a
killer changes the lives of everyone around him. Hannah wrote the novel while
getting chemotherapy treatments for lymphoma. He's now in remission. I spoke
with him last year when the book was published in hardcover. We started with
a short reading.

Mr. BARRY HANNAH (Author): This is Man Mortimer, who is the evil that lurks
in this book, and he likes to cut people. He comes from Missouri, and this is
a little piece about him.

`At this juncture, he had no plans to hurt people around the lake. He did not
like bodies of water much, had never seen the ocean. He was indifferent to
trees. Soil was hateful to him, as was the odor of fish. But like many
another man 45 years in age, he wanted his youth back. He wanted to have
pals, sports, high school girls. This need had rushed on him lately. He
lived in three houses, but he had no home. He did not like the hearth, smells
in the kitchen, an old friend for a wife, small talk. It all seemed a vicious
closet to him. He moved, he took, he was admired. But he had developed a
taste for young and younger flesh. This was thrilling and meant high money.
Men and women in this nation were changing, and he intended to charge them for
it.

`Religion had neither formed, nor harmed him. Neither had his parents in
southern Missouri. But he despised the weakness of the church, and of his
parents in whom he had in whom he had gulled. He was a pretty boy born of
hawk-nosed people. It was a curse to have these looks and no talent. Long
lank, hooded eyes, sensual lips that sang no tune. Still, he quit the
football team because of what it did to his hair, claiming a back ailment that
had exempted him from manual labor since age 14. There are thousands of men
of this condition, most of them sorry and shiftless, defeated at the start.
Many are compulsives and snarling fools, demeritus at 20.'

GROSS: Is this character of Man Mortimer based on anyone?

Mr. HANNAH: No, he's not. He's a compound I've gotten just by looking
around and believing that I perceived evil in front of me. So it is an
imaginative but a collected history of my impressions, I believe.

GROSS: You describe him as a quiet man, a gambler, a liaison for stolen cars
and a runner of whores, including three Vicksburg housewives. Describe his
kind of crime.

Mr. HANNAH: His kind of crime is the kind of crime that begins out of
laziness and being admired by women. He finds he can make a living at it, and
he continues since he ran away from home in high school. He's not been
particularly violent, but he has induced violent suicides in others. He is a
thief. He has a stolen car ring, especially expensive SUVs. He's a man who
doesn't like to work and he doesn't like much of what's offered by nature. So
I've painted him as an alien without real pals and only a commercial
connection to women. He wants to join in society now, but he only knows how
to hurt, and that's the base of the book, evil when it reaches out to you and
when it befriends you, and in Mortimer's case, he likes to use a knife.

GROSS: Why did you want to create a character who embodies evil?

Mr. HANNAH: I have been fascinated with how evil goes unpunished, even
unseen in this life. And I wanted the evil to work on a group of folks I have
already imagined in my short stories around a beautiful lake of my youth. And
I thought the evil that Mortimer represented would give each of them decisions
to make. And it would give a focus to their lives. So that I suppose I am
just interested in evil and what it does to folks in a community.

GROSS: Has evil like Man Mortimer's kind of evil ever come into your life?

Mr. HANNAH: I've been around it. Usually, evil is something you can't face.
It simply has to wear out. Sometimes you work for evil unwittingly. And I
can't think of a particular person right now, but I think I've felt the
closeness of evil in casinos. And it brings out the old Baptist in me. I
find the wretched excess and the sort of zombified folks that attend and
participate in casinos pathetic and also dangerous, in many cases.

GROSS: Now what about violence? There's some violence in this book. Has
violence come into your life? Have you witnessed it? Have you ever had a
violent streak yourself?

Mr. HANNAH: I liked to throw knives back in my drinking days, but, no, I've
never been personally violent. I can't be an honest man, though, and tell you
but that I am occupied by violence. It seems to be out of my nightmares. And
my wife wishes I wouldn't write about violence, but as soon as the pen starts
going, I become interested in it all over again. And it's almost dictated to
me. I've been writing for 35 years, and it's attended a good deal of my work.
At this point, I don't think I can do anything but confess that I am a student
of violence, because of what it does, because of how it quickens the character
of those around it.

Everyone in your book is quite damaged in some way or another. Why is that?

Mr. HANNAH: Well, you know, I noticed that a New York Times reviewer said
that this book was a parade of gargoyles, and there are damaged folks in it.
I think that people are needing to mend around a lake. A lake is a great
contemplative body for me, and lakes have soothed me all my life. And I think
that the wounded and those in despair might naturally gather around such a
lake to live. I do not think my characters are particularly grotesque. It is
my honest view of how folks live. And those fans of mine who don't really see
them as terribly eccentric or my painting them as obsessive, they think
they're looking at life straight on. When you look at all of us, you're going
to find a kind of private hurt that can be monstrous, and our private
obsessions are very strange to others if they knew them. That's about all.

GROSS: Now I think you wrote most of this novel after being diagnosed with
lymphoma and some of it while taking chemotherapy treatments. Were you
feeling kind of particularly damaged yourself when you were writing,
physically damaged?

Mr. HANNAH: Yeah. And that probably contributes to the themes of damage in
the book. I hadn't considered that, but my wife read the book and she said,
`You know, this is very dark.' And I had told a buddy of mine, very close to
me, Dan Williams(ph), `You're going to have fun with this one, Dan. There's a
lot of exuberance,' and when it was finished, it was darker than I knew. I do
think I was writing out of some real obsession with mortality and physical
pain and on steroids some of the time, where the steroids were my only energy.
They were the only drug that kept me standing during the chemotherapy.

GROSS: How do you think the exhaustion of being sick and taking chemo
affected your will to write, your ability to write, the style that you wrote
in?

Mr. HANNAH: You know, I really can't answer for that. I know that much came
in a rush, private inner rushes, and that it was composed in tranquility that
became a little more panicked and more panicked as I wrote. Because I got
deeper into treatment and into weakness. So it was a book that may be paced;
beginning with kind of a healthy or just clinical observations about folks,
and then it becomes maybe more frantic.

GROSS: It takes a lot of endurance to write. I mean, I think it's a pretty
exhausting, mentally exhausting occupation; physically not so much, though,
because you're just sitting in a chair. Were you surprised at how much energy
it took to write?

Mr. HANNAH: Yeah. I've never been this weak in my life, and I was shocked by
weakness which just accompanies the treatment, and I agree it takes a lot of
energy and a lot of muscular strength. I mean, I used a pencil, and I love
all of these tools, but it never had occurred to me what a vast physical job
writing was until this book. Because in my earlier books, I had trouble
keeping up with my pencil. The stories were coming so hot and heavy. And
this one--this was a rather long and very exhausting view into a force that
weakened me personally. I had a hundred pages more than this book was and it
was cleaned up and helped beautifully by my editor, Amy Hundley(ph), and by my
wife also. My wife typed the manuscript. I was, for the first time in my
life, very, very dependent on the women around me, and I'm very beholden and
full of love for these people.

GROSS: We're listening to an interview recorded last summer with Barry Hannah
when his novel "Yonder Stands Your Orphan" was published. It's just come out
in paperback. He's still in remission from cancer. We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Barry Hannah. His latest novel is called "Yonder Stands
Your Orphan."

There's a bar in which your novel opens. It's called the Walnut Bar(ph). I
want you to describe this bar.

Mr. HANNAH: This bar is one of the few surviving--I'm turning the pages now.
I'm looking into what it is. It's a roadhouse really, with a little bait.
He's the man who still has roaches for bait, which is really unheard of since
the '50s almost. But he's a wise man in the ways of fishing. He advises
folks on depth and lures and the wind. He's a bard. Men come there because
it has none of the trappings of a woman about it. It has a calendar of a
naked bosomy girl on the wall. And it evokes the '50s around the Korean War.
So it's where men gather in different places in the South, you know, to be men
and to talk manly. And it's a rough place, but it's also a kind of a church.
I can't--the bar is Walnut. As far as I know, it's unnamed. And it also is
unlicensed. The sheriff allows it or disallows it to be open. What it is is
a mecca for fishermen, and every fisherman I know who's serious about going
long distances to fish will know something about a roadhouse like this.

GROSS: Whereas I know nothing about a roadhouse like this. And I don't know
whether it's because I'm a woman or because I'm from the North or because I'm
from the city. But, you know, I was reading this, I'm thinking I've never had
the experience of being in a bar like this.

Mr. HANNAH: There's no reason why you should, Terry. I wouldn't go in there
if I were a woman. There's nothing attractive, unless you fish and you see a
sort of rugged charm about the folks. It's pretty pathetic really on its own
merits, but he does have good whiskey, which he overcharges for, and he's got
tales. He's telling stories about people around the lake. So he is kind of
the Homer of the place. And the people are disappointed in him, in fact.
He's now got a videotape he's selling behind the counter, which is close to
child pornography. And the two men that we're introduced to, Robbie(ph) and
Cecil(ph), are sad that he's joined the modern times, but we find, of course,
that Man Mortimer himself is doing local films with orphan girls. It's not an
attractive place. There's just no reason for anybody to go there, except
rough and kind of manly fishermen who are trying to get away from everything
back at the office or the hardware store or wherever.

You grew up in Mississippi, you still live in Mississippi. What are some of
the things that you think most separate Southern culture from Northern
culture?

Mr. HANNAH: Oh, gad. It's still relatively unhurried here, when you get out
of the big urban centers like Nashville and Atlanta, which are very
cosmopolitan now. They're very much like a lot of the nation. But there's a
world of difference between a football crowd at a Vandy-Ol' Miss game
and a Penn State crowd. I can tell by experience. There is just a leisure
about the culture and a kind of love of jokes and especially old times.
People in the South are nostalgic by age 11. I tell you that in the book, but
it's not a joke. It's--looking back even to poverty as a great old time. We
have a great yearning for softer, quieter, kinder times. I think we're just
afflicted with that Irish look at the past, as a comfort and a joy. And we
celebrate the past a great deal more than other places.

GROSS: Did you grow up reading a lot of the literature of the South? Did the
fact that you were from the South affect your choices in what to read or the
things that you were assigned in school?

Mr. HANNAH: I did not read the literature of the South. I only heard the
great names spoken, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams. I was
not literary a bit, frankly, until I went to high school. I got a high school
class and started reading some Keats, and then I think next was Jack London.
So I'm a schooled literary man. It wasn't just instantly available in the
house.

GROSS: What was it about Keats that did it for you?

Mr. HANNAH: I think it was the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and I had such a
good teacher, Mrs. Lois Blackwell(ph), that made that thing come alive, and I
could see the joy in language and how somebody could get rapturous over
beauty. And also knowing that he died at 26 interested me because I was,
like, 17, and that seemed like a pretty decent life span then, you know? And
so you just kind of get the move on, you can get your poems in, die at 26 and
be famous. So that was actually kind of inviting to a stupid boy in school
like me.

GROSS: Have you ever gone through a real dry period writing, where it just
wouldn't come and you give up?

Mr. HANNAH: Yes. But I think that's what--it's good to teach and have a
regular paycheck because I go for some months without inspiration and it
frightens me. It frightens me deeply. Nobody wants to be out of gas. Nobody
wants to repeat himself. So these are frightening times. And I was keeping a
journal to try to help myself. I've heard that it helps, but my journal was
full of such banal thoughts I wouldn't dare let anybody read them. I'd be
just like, `Taking out the dog' and `It's raining today.' I had no great
thoughts unless I was working, and that's the way it's been. I just don't
think--my thoughts are very average, ordinary, until I get among people and
language. I think I do have some thoughts then, and there's my real work, my
mental life. You just wait out these periods. I think it's good. There are
already too many books, and you want to save it until you're ready and you can
do your best. And when those days come, that's just a wonderful feeling,
because, you know, I get up at 4 in the morning full of joy, go into those
notebooks and I just feel like I'm the luckiest man in the world.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. HANNAH: You bet.

GROSS: Barry Hannah, recorded last July when his novel "Yonder Stands Your
Orphan" was first published. It's just come out in paperback. The title
refers to a line in this Bob Dylan song. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH
AIR.

Mr. BOB DYLAN: (Singing) You must leave now, take what you need you think
will last. But whatever you wish to keep, you'd better grab it fast. Yonder
stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun. Look out,
those things are coming through, and it's all over now, baby blue. The
highway is for gamblers...

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, rock historian Ed Ward tells us about the brief life of a
record label run by the songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller. John Powers
reviews the new Spielberg movie "Minority Report." And we remember the writer
June Jordan with a 1989 interview. She died one week ago.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Professional music careers of Jerry Leiber and Mike
Stoller
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller have written hits for hundreds of artists and
produced records from many of them, but even legends have to start somewhere.
And today rock historian Ed Ward has the story of the pair's first big
business venture: Spark Records.

(Soundbite of music)

ED WARD reporting:

Spark Records owes its birth to one of the music business' bigger crooks. Don
Robey of Peacock Records put out "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton, a song
written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two LA teen-agers. It was bad
enough the kids had to go with their mothers to sign documents allowing them
to collect the royalties, but once they did Robey wrote them a check, then
stopped payment on it and vanished.

The two decided that it was time to own the means of production and started a
label with Jerry's dad, Lee(ph), and Lester Sill, a veteran LA music biz guy.
It was simple: They'd write and produce the records. Finding talent after
having a million-seller wasn't going to be hard, and so in March 1954, Spark
101(ph) came out, a little ditty by Willie and Ruth.

(Soundbite of "Spark 101")

WILLIE and RUTH: (Singing) Well, well, farewell. I'm leaving you. Farewell,
farewell. I'm leaving you. I just found out through Candy Sue(ph). Too late
for tears.

WARD: The second release was by their secret-weapon sax player, Gil Barnal.
But it was the third one that did the trick.

(Soundbite of music)

THE ROBINS: (Singing) On July the second, 1953, I was serving time for armed
robbery. At 4:00 in the morning I was sleeping in my cell. I heard a whistle
blow, then I heard somebody yell...

There's a riot going on. There's a riot going on. There's a riot going on up
in cell block number nine.

WARD: The Robins were a bunch of kids Leiber and Stoller knew, but somehow
when they rehearsed this song, which was perfectly tailored to the group's
comic tendencies, it didn't work. They got veteran Richard Berry, who was to
achieve fame with "Louie Louie" later on, to come in and talk the verse.
Setting a pattern that was to haunt Spark, the record sold brilliantly on the
West Coast. The duo weren't daunted, though, and they wrote another classic
for the next Spark release.

(Soundbite of music)

WILLIE and RUTH: (Singing) Leave me like a fool, treat me mean and cruel, but
love me. Break my faithful heart, tear it all apart, but love me. If you
ever go...

WARD: Unfortunately, Willie and Ruth's version of this song went nowhere, and
it wasn't until later when the two presented it to Elvis that the world would
hear it. Like many independent record guys, Leiber and Stoller weren't averse
to stuff cut by others if the deal was good. Then one day a skinny
Mississippian showed up on their doorstep with a reel of tape he had produced
back home. The Spark guys must have known his main gig was for Modern
Records, another much larger LA label. But maybe this stuff was too weird for
Modern.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. EUGENE FOX: (Singing) Now something's goin' on that I can't accept. My
baby leave home, nobody knows where she went. I hate to do it, but I guess I
may. I'm going to do what the hoodoos say. Get some of your hair and boil it
in a pot. Take some of your clothes, tie them in a knot. Put them in a snuff
can. Bury them under the steps. Then you will want, baby, nobody else.

Group of Men: (Singing) Oh, say it, say it, baby. I've got my eye on you.
When I catch you, baby, no tellin' what I might do.

WARD: The kid was Ike Turner, and the tape was by Eugene Fox, who called
himself `The Sly Fox.' Spark put out all the tracks on the tape, but it
appeared Modern was right; too weird. Again, like many independent producers,
they weren't above plagiarizing themselves, but their songwriting often lifted
the records above the norm.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. `BIG BOY' GROVES: (Singing) Here I sit behind a port wine glass. New
car outside and not a drop of gas. Nothing down and three years to pay.
Sounded like a pretty good deal another day.

Group of Men: (Singing) I got a new car. I got a new car. I got a new car,
but I'm broke as I can be.

Mr. BIG BOY GROVES: Since I wrote on that dotted line, I haven't been able
to sufficiently dine. Toothpicks and soup ain't much of a meal. And $144 a
month ain't much of a deal.

Group of Men: I got a new car.

WARD: Big Boy Groves wasn't The Robins, but this is a pretty funny record all
the way through. The thing was The Robins were hot to trot, and they wound up
with a lot of Leiber and Stoller's best material. They were willing to
rehearse with their producers, and in the end that's what killed Spark.

(Soundbite of "Smokey Joe's Cafe")

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Oh, ah-ah, Smokey Joe's Cafe. Oh, ah-ah, Smokey
Joe's Cafe. One day while I was eating mean...

THE ROBINS: (singing) ...at Smokey Joe's Cafe...

Unidentified Man: ...just sittin' diggin' all the scenes...

THE ROBINS: ...at Smokey Joe's Cafe...

Unidentified Man: ...a chick came walking through the door that I have never
seen before. At least I never saw her car...

THE ROBINS: ...at Smokey Joe's Cafe.

Unidentified Man: And I started shaking when she sat right down next to me.
Whoo. Her knees were almost touching mine...

WARD: At least it was success that put an end to the label. Nesuhi Ertegun,
one of the partners in the most successful R&B label at the moment, Atlantic,
heard The Robins' "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and sent a copy to his brother Ahmet at
the home office in New York. This immediately resulted in Atlantic leasing
the title and putting it out.

Once Leiber and Stoller saw how easily it turned into a national hit, even
cracking those hard-to-reach pop charts, they lost no time closing Spark and
accepting jobs as house songwriters and producers for Atlantic and moving to
New York with some of The Robins, who, being from the West Coast, immediately
became The Coasters.

So maybe we shouldn't be so hard on Don Robey. By cheating two teen-agers he
launched two of the most brilliant careers rock 'n' roll has ever seen.

GROSS: Writer Ed Ward lives in Berlin. Here's The Robins, recorded in 1955.

(Soundbite of music)

THE ROBINS: (Singing) Oh-ho-ho-ho. Oh! Oh-ho-ho-ho. Oh! Oh-ho-ho-ho.
Oh! Oh-ho-ho-ho...

Unidentified Man: Well, I met her in a dance hall...

THE ROBINS: (Singing) Come on. Let's go.

Unidentified Man: ...in Tennessee.

THE ROBINS: Come on. Let's go.

Unidentified Man: I smiled at her.

THE ROBINS: Come on. Let's go.

Unidentified Man: She smiled at me.

THE ROBINS: Come on. Let's go.

Unidentified Man: I said, `Baby, it would move me...'

THE ROBINS: Come on. Let's go.

Unidentified Man: `...if I could dance with you.' She said, `Anything that
moves you, daddy, is gonna move me, too.

THE ROBINS: I said, `I...'

Unidentified Man: `...must be dreaming.'

THE ROBINS: I said, `I must be dreaming.' I said, `I must be dreaming.
Life's never been this good to me.' Oh-ho-ho-ho. Oh! Oh-ho-ho-ho. Oh!

Unidentified Man: Well, let's jump this old dance hall...

GROSS: Coming up, we remember the writer June Jordan with a 1989 interview.
She died one week ago at the age of 65.

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
been omitted from this transcript

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Steven Spielberg's new film "Minority Report"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Our film critic, John Powers, has a review of Steven Spielberg's new film,
"Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise. It's set in the future and is based
on a short story by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

JOHN POWERS reporting:

The late novelist Philip K. Dick once remarked, `You'd have to kill me and
prop me up in the seat of my car with a smile painted on my face to get me to
go near Hollywood.' I wonder how he'd feel about the new thriller "Minority
Report," which turns one of his short stories into an extravagantly imagined
action film that's Steven Spielberg's best and most enjoyable work in years.

Although the movie's PR blitz keeps bombarding us with stories about Tom
Cruise, whose 40th birthday is being greeted as some sort of cultural
watershed, the real story here is the pairing of Spielberg and Dick, for if
any two artists embody the archetypal oppositions of our culture, fame vs.
neglect, riches vs. poverty, sunny professionalism vs. lunar inspiration, it's
the greatest corporate artist who ever lived and the reigning cult novelist of
the last 50 years.

"Minority Report" is set in the Washington, DC, of 2054, where there hasn't
been a murder for years. You see, there's a Department of Precrime, a branch
of the police that arrests people for crimes that they haven't yet committed,
but that three psychic mutants have determined they're going to. The
department's top officer is John Anderton--that's Cruise--who believes in the
system run by his boss, played by Max Von Sydow, and defends it against a
Justice Department upstart who seems to think it's immoral.

But Anderton loses his own faith when the psychics suddenly announce that he's
going to commit a murder, that he's going to gun down a man he's never even
heard of. Suddenly running for his life, he scours the city for proof that
the precrime machinery isn't infallible. Here Anderton talks to the man in
charge of a huge lablike prison where convicted precriminals are kept in
gigantic test tubelike containers.

(Soundbite of "Minority Report")

Mr. TOM CRUISE: (As John Anderton) I'd forgotten there were so many.

Unidentified Man: And to think they'd all be out there killing people, if it
wasn't for you. Look at them. Look at how peaceful they all seem. But on
the inside, busy, busy, busy. Okey-pokey. Now that is one bad man.

OK, so you want just the female prevision.

Mr. CRUISE: (As John Anderton) That's right.

Unidentified Man: Can't let you take that out of here, chief. It's against
the rules.

Mr. CRUISE: (As John Anderton) Anything else going on in here that's against
the rules?

Unidentified Man: Careful, chief. You dig up the past, all you get is dirty.

POWERS: Starting from a superb script by Scott Frank, "Minority Report" does
a terrific job of plunging us into an alternate reality. Spielberg has been
around for so long that it's easy to take his huge talent for granted, but
here it's everywhere to be seen: in the film's pervasive feeling of dread, in
its dollops of offbeat humor and in its inventive action set pieces. There's
a classic that takes place in a car factory. He conjures up a baleful future
in which cars roar along vertical freeways attached to high-rises, and beneath
the city's glossy surface an underworld sells black-market eyeballs that allow
you to avoid ID scanners.

Spielberg became the most successful filmmaker of all time due to his
brilliance at making things vivid. But his artistic limitation is a
conventional mind, which may be why he's drawn to Dick, who had a mind so
unconventional that it nearly did him in. Churning out cheapy paperbacks and
gobbling speed like M&M's, Dick had a brain bursting with ideas about God, the
elusive nature of reality and the self as the ultimate mirage. If he'd
written "The Bourne Identity," its poor hero would have never found out who he
really is.

One of "Minority Report"'s perverse pleasures is its bleak portrait of a
future that looks like an eerie extension of present-day
America, in its domination by corporations its inescapable
invasions of privacy, and most vivid, its idea of a squad of precrime fighters
devoted to arresting criminals before they've actually done anything, an idea
not without its resonance now that we're fighting a war on terror.

Still, for all of "Minority Report"'s virtue, you can feel the conflict
between the cult novelist's subversive interiority and the Hollywood
director's desire for spectacle. Where Dick's work crackles with paranoia and
a desire for freedom, Spielberg is ultimately more excited about showing off
his futuristic world: the holograms that replaced home movies, the mechanical
spiders that scan eyeballs during ID checks. He finds this stuff cool. In
the world according to Dick, people struggle to transcend shadowy forces they
can't ever really escape. In Spielberg's world they can and do escape.

The film's last 20 minutes are a letdown because they soften things and make
them routine. They transform a visionary thriller into a whodunit whose happy
ending comes complete with a beaming pregnant woman. While Spielberg here is
being true to his sensibility, the ending reminds us that what gives this
movie its sting is Dick's dark vision.

"Minority Report" is undeniably more fun than the original story, for
Spielberg will always report to the majority. But Dick's minority reports
have the authority of a lonely human voice crying out in our high-tech
wilderness. We live in his world now.

GROSS: John Powers is executive editor and media columnist for LA Weekly.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.