WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.490 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.490 --> 00:00:04.770 align:middle line:84% It's a very long, large book, and it's 00:00:04.770 --> 00:00:08.085 align:middle line:84% going to be the sort of history of the 20th century. 00:00:08.085 --> 00:00:11.310 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:11.310 --> 00:00:12.310 align:middle line:90% Among other things. 00:00:12.310 --> 00:00:14.950 align:middle line:84% So film does have to figure greatly in it. 00:00:14.950 --> 00:00:20.580 align:middle line:84% Ava also had a first husband who was an Italian film director 00:00:20.580 --> 00:00:24.390 align:middle line:90% goes on and on my mind. 00:00:24.390 --> 00:00:28.230 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHS] 00:00:28.230 --> 00:00:30.825 align:middle line:84% It's a great pleasure, really to have something that you know 00:00:30.825 --> 00:00:34.350 align:middle line:84% will not be done not tomorrow not the next day. 00:00:34.350 --> 00:00:38.490 align:middle line:84% I can just sort of live in a different sort of way. 00:00:38.490 --> 00:00:40.350 align:middle line:84% In the meantime though, I have published 00:00:40.350 --> 00:00:43.530 align:middle line:84% a series of small books because I need to write every day. 00:00:43.530 --> 00:00:46.980 align:middle line:84% And sometimes my stamina has not been great 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:49.230 align:middle line:84% either because I've been directing a creative writing 00:00:49.230 --> 00:00:51.540 align:middle line:84% program at Brown, which I'm now mercifully not 00:00:51.540 --> 00:00:54.160 align:middle line:84% doing or having a baby or other things. 00:00:54.160 --> 00:00:56.520 align:middle line:84% And so small projects intervened. 00:00:56.520 --> 00:00:59.490 align:middle line:84% And Frida, my little Frida was one of them, 00:00:59.490 --> 00:01:06.270 align:middle line:84% something that I just wanted to keep my hand in and try things 00:01:06.270 --> 00:01:07.900 align:middle line:90% that I hadn't done before. 00:01:07.900 --> 00:01:09.680 align:middle line:84% And so it's a sort of part of my-- 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:11.580 align:middle line:84% they call me an experimental writer. 00:01:11.580 --> 00:01:14.340 align:middle line:84% So it's a part of my laboratory I would say. 00:01:14.340 --> 00:01:16.440 align:middle line:90% Is a book like this. 00:01:16.440 --> 00:01:26.850 align:middle line:84% I say that I think because it's a book that is not poetry 00:01:26.850 --> 00:01:30.300 align:middle line:84% and it's not fiction and it's not biography 00:01:30.300 --> 00:01:34.140 align:middle line:84% and it's not autobiography, but it is a bit of all of those. 00:01:34.140 --> 00:01:38.130 align:middle line:84% And I'm very interested in how to just make 00:01:38.130 --> 00:01:41.040 align:middle line:84% something that gets close to what you need 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:45.960 align:middle line:84% it to be without concern as to what you do in order 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:47.050 align:middle line:90% to get there. 00:01:47.050 --> 00:01:51.795 align:middle line:84% And so I was very, very taken at a certain point with reading 00:01:51.795 --> 00:01:53.400 align:middle line:90% Frida Kahlo's-- 00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:55.685 align:middle line:84% I believe the only diary she ever kept, 00:01:55.685 --> 00:01:57.060 align:middle line:84% which was at the end of her life. 00:01:57.060 --> 00:02:00.930 align:middle line:90% 00:02:00.930 --> 00:02:04.160 align:middle line:90% She was suffering a great deal. 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:06.680 align:middle line:84% Her leg had been-- was in the process of being 00:02:06.680 --> 00:02:08.419 align:middle line:90% amputated at that point. 00:02:08.419 --> 00:02:15.260 align:middle line:84% She was drug addicted, furious, vulnerable. 00:02:15.260 --> 00:02:18.740 align:middle line:84% And not only the images are amazing because they're not 00:02:18.740 --> 00:02:26.870 align:middle line:84% the typical careful image that Frida always made, 00:02:26.870 --> 00:02:27.950 align:middle line:90% but something quite else. 00:02:27.950 --> 00:02:32.600 align:middle line:84% But the language, the actual language of the thing 00:02:32.600 --> 00:02:33.800 align:middle line:90% was extraordinary. 00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:36.200 align:middle line:90% I said, wow, she can write too. 00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:39.740 align:middle line:84% And what I wanted to do basically, was take the writing 00:02:39.740 --> 00:02:42.650 align:middle line:84% and put it in a book and have people look at it. 00:02:42.650 --> 00:02:45.080 align:middle line:84% So I thought, well, I could be next to her maybe 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:46.340 align:middle line:90% a little bit, right. 00:02:46.340 --> 00:02:48.668 align:middle line:90% With her right next to her. 00:02:48.668 --> 00:02:50.210 align:middle line:84% And then I thought, well, let's put-- 00:02:50.210 --> 00:02:52.850 align:middle line:84% include Hayden Herrera who's her biographer, 00:02:52.850 --> 00:02:56.870 align:middle line:84% and who written quite an interesting biography as well, 00:02:56.870 --> 00:02:58.760 align:middle line:90% and put some of that in too-- 00:02:58.760 --> 00:03:02.090 align:middle line:84% and put Frida's letters and put my own 00:03:02.090 --> 00:03:06.800 align:middle line:84% so that I could sort of have a communion of sorts 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:14.330 align:middle line:84% during this time when I was feeling utterly besieged 00:03:14.330 --> 00:03:15.950 align:middle line:90% by outside obligations. 00:03:15.950 --> 00:03:19.040 align:middle line:84% I had this little relationship with Frida Kahlo. 00:03:19.040 --> 00:03:22.820 align:middle line:84% And now, I mean the book oddly has come out 00:03:22.820 --> 00:03:25.760 align:middle line:84% in exactly the same moment as the film. 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:32.180 align:middle line:84% So hopefully, by just happenstance really, 00:03:32.180 --> 00:03:36.740 align:middle line:84% and hopefully people will really, sort of 00:03:36.740 --> 00:03:40.040 align:middle line:84% go and find the work, which I think is the main thing. 00:03:40.040 --> 00:03:42.470 align:middle line:84% And my Frida, the interviewers call me. 00:03:42.470 --> 00:03:44.210 align:middle line:84% Well, what kind of Frida did you make? 00:03:44.210 --> 00:03:45.740 align:middle line:90% She's a painter. 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:47.480 align:middle line:84% She's a great painter and I think 00:03:47.480 --> 00:03:51.080 align:middle line:84% that the idea it's a preposterous thing 00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:53.750 align:middle line:84% to write a book about Frida Kahlo, it's just too much, 00:03:53.750 --> 00:03:54.860 align:middle line:90% it's too-- 00:03:54.860 --> 00:03:58.580 align:middle line:84% But my notion was to try to retrieve the woman 00:03:58.580 --> 00:04:03.560 align:middle line:84% from the icon while also simultaneously understanding 00:04:03.560 --> 00:04:08.630 align:middle line:84% completely that she had played into this notion of being 00:04:08.630 --> 00:04:13.010 align:middle line:84% an icon, that she was very deliberately involved in it 00:04:13.010 --> 00:04:13.890 align:middle line:90% as well. 00:04:13.890 --> 00:04:16.769 align:middle line:84% So I thought that was something I wanted to do at any rate. 00:04:16.769 --> 00:04:20.839 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read the first and the last pieces from the book. 00:04:20.839 --> 00:04:27.440 align:middle line:84% And the first actually is a piece about Frida as a girl. 00:04:27.440 --> 00:04:29.780 align:middle line:84% And then the last will be a piece 00:04:29.780 --> 00:04:33.520 align:middle line:90% that occurs after her death.