The Art of the Interview: Lessons from a Master of the Craft
To conduct a good interview, you must "converse like a talk show host, think like a writer, understand subtext like a psychiatrist, have an ear like a musician, be able to select the best parts like a book editor and know how to piece it together dramatically like a playwright." This is the sound advice of famed Playboy interviewer Grobel, the man who scored the only in-depth interview with Patty Hearst and who got the elusive Marlon Brando to agree to a week-long interview in Tahiti. Grobel, who has also written a biography of the Hustons and contributed to numerous other publications, gives readers the equivalent of a master class in this thoroughly entertaining treatise on one of the toughest tasks in journalism. He is generous with information and journalistic tips, explaining, among other things, how to prepare for the meeting and how to get the subject to open up. An invaluable resource for aspiring journalists, the book also satisfies the voyeuristic desires of a celebrity obsessed culture by raising the curtain on the idiosyncratic demands of stars and by putting the reader in the interviewer’s chair. Grobel does this throughout the book by deconstructing some of his more famous dialogues, including those of former Indiana Hoosiers coach Bobby Knight, Drew Barrymore and Barbra Streisand, who presented him with a contract drawn up by her attorneys when he arrived at her home for the interview. The book is an overstuffed treat, full of anecdotes, advice from other top writers and the kind of commiserating stories about difficult editors, hellish assignments and prickly stars that will seize the attention of both professional interviewers and their audiences.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.