Elia Kazan on Tennessee Williams And His Fog





Interview with Elia Kazan
Conducted by James Grissom
New York City
1993


I don't remember when Tennessee told me about the stage in his mind and the fog that rolled in, but he did tell me. We were talking about ideas and characters and where they came from, and he described his mental theatre, with the curtains and boards and lots of fog, from which emerged a woman, who had a story, a cause, a need to escape a place or an idea or a limitation. And I remembered that, and I thought it would be great to have Vivien [Leigh], as Blanche, make her entrance in a fog of creativity, a burst of smoke that obscured her and her vision, and there she was. And that fog meant a lot to me, because it was really the vapor, the fog, of delusion in which she had long lived and which hung to her like a bad smell. 






©  2014  James Grissom

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