Page 3 of 4
(2001-02-01)One Magic Christmas; Parenthood; An Ideal Husband; The Wizard of Oz; Robin and Marian; Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet; A Period of Adjustment; The Shawshank Redemption; Braveheart; Being John Malkovich; Terminator 2; Empire of the Sun; The Court Jester; You've Got Mail; A Fish Called Wanda; Pitch Black; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Twister; As Good As It Gets; Nashville; Three Kings; The Iron Giant; Roxanne; An Affair to Remember; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Lion King; Ben-Hur; The Dirty Dozen; Body Heat; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Galaxy Quest; Aliens; Oliver!; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; High Noon; Shane; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; The King of Kings (silent version); Laurel & Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers; The Breakfast Club; Fast Times at Ridgemont High; All the President's Men; Three Musketeers/Four Musketeers (Michael Yorke version); Prince of Egypt; Old Yeller; Becket; Castaway; Ransom; Some Kind of Wonderful; The Good Son; The Omen; How to Steal a Million; To Catch a Thief; Lawrence of Arabia; Dr. Zhivago; Raiders of the Lost Ark; Star Wars; The Empire Strikes Back; American Graffiti; A Walk in the Clouds; Sleepless in Seattle; Barefoot in the Park; The Odd Couple; Rocky; Dumb & Dumber; The Dead Zone; The Great Escape;; Stalag 17; Twelve Angry Men; The Natural; Slaughterhouse Five; Phantom of the Paradise; Sabrina (Harrison Ford version); Witness; Big Daddy; Die Hard; That's Entertainment; Romancing the Stone; Persuasion; Clueless; Emerald Forest; Broadway Bound; Biloxi Blues; Funny Girl; The Jerk; A Simple Twist of Fate; Heathers; The Gods Must Be Crazy; Mission Impossible 2; The Wedding Singer; Zardoz (a guilty pleasure); Pride and Prejudice (multi-part TV); Horatio Hornblower (multi-part TV). Which novel would you like to see filmed?
I'm looking forward to Lord of the Rings. I would also love to see Nobody's Son, Mohawk, The Golden Queen Trilogy, and Richard II. Not to mention my own books and stories: Pageant Wagon (as a sung-through musical), Stone Tables, Enchantment, Homebody, Ender's Game/Ender's Shadow, Wyrms, Treason, Hart's Hope, Treasure Box, Sarah, Dogwalker, Fat Farm, Red Prophet, Saints. What music do you listen to?
I listen to music constantly while writing, cycling through two hundred cds on a "jukebox" player. My tastes are eclectic. The jukebox includes classical ( including Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Stravinsky, Chopin, Debussy, Barber, Copeland), folk-rock (including Janis Ian; Joni Mitchell; various configurations of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; James Taylor; Jackson Browne), rock (including Bruce Springsteen, George Thorogood, Sting, Genesis, Tom Waits, Mike and the Mechanics, Leon Russell), country (including Lyle Lovett, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lorrie Morgan, Emmy Lou Harris, Vince Gill), Brazilian (including Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethania, Simone, Djavan, Chico Buarque), traditional pop (including Michael Feinstein, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand), Broadway and film (various cast albums and soloists, film music by my brother Arlen Card, and two cast albums for which I wrote the lyrics, "Stone Tables" and "Barefoot to Zion") and some of my favorites that defy category (like Shirley Eikhardt, Bruce Cockburn, Beth Nielson Chapman, Ruben Blades, Grayson Hugh, Darden Smith, Buster Poindexter, Patti Scialfa, Mark Cohn, and Robert Stoddard, whose great album "December Tales" has been important to me all this past autumn). And this still leaves many dozens unmentioned ... Which decade would you most like to live in?
I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more. In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now. I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt. 
Copyright© 2002 Orbit. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. The interview has been provided by Orbit and is printed with their permission. | 
