A Few Words with Antonia Quirke, author of CHOKING ON MARLON BRANDO

London film critic and author Antonia Quirke is interviewed in New York's arts weekly The Villager. Her memoir Choking on Marlon Brando, has just been released in paperback. Here's an excerpt from Will McKinley's interview:

WILL McKINLEY: Can you explain your book's title?

ANTONIA QUIRKE: When I was 10 I came downstairs in the middle of the night. My parents were watching "A Streetcar Named Desire" and I had a little collapse.

WM: Brando's performance made you lose control of your body?

AQ: Yes. It was just the full-on sex appeal, his charisma. I can remember very clearly being entirely overcome by his physique, his voice, his face. I was very young and wasn't entirely sure what to do with those feelings. I just wigged out.

WM:What was the first movie you ever saw?

AQ: I had never seen a movie before that.

WM: How did you manage to live 10 years without seeing a movie?

AQ: My parents didn't have a TV. They didn't believe in it. I was aware of television, but I wasn't aware of movies at all. I had wound myself up quite a lot that night before I came downstairs, listening to the drama that was going on in our living room and then realizing that it was happening on screen, rather than in real life. All of that blurring of boundaries just overwhelmed me completely. The wonder of cinema hit me square between the eyes.

WM: The technology that exists today— where kids can see everything on demand, or make their own movies and post them on the internet—is that a good or a bad thing?

AQ: I think its bad. The other day I was swimming and there was a group of schoolgirls. They spent the whole day taking photographs of each other and uploading them to Facebook. They weren't actually living their life; they were commemorating it as if it were a movie they were in.

WM: Maybe the next generation's rebellion will be to throw all of this aside and just live.

AQ: I doubt it. Everybody is performing to a certain extent now. Phoniness is overtaking us. People use phrases about breaking up that they've seen in movies to break up with people in real life. And they don't even realize they're doing it. It's like a virus that's going through the culture.

WM: Speaking of phoniness, you developed this idolatry toward actors as a kid. But then you grew up and dated one, and the result was not pretty. Did that change your view?

AQ: Yes. He didn't like to be in a room filled with known people. He preferred to be with strangers, people he could win. because it was a performance. It was a constant performance. I watched him and I became a sort of archivist of his great performances at the dinner table. I became a storyteller because of him. I would never have written the book if I hadn't been with him and learned to tell stories in that kind of way. It was as dangerous as it was terrific.

WM: What's your favorite movie?

AQ: Oh my God, I don't know. "Serpico," probably.

WM: Don't the New York movies of the '70s make you hate today's movies even more?

AQ: Yes. I love the chaos of the streets in those movies, like "Serpico" or "Shaft" or "Dog Day Afternoon." New York was a mess. It was a frightening place, where you had to be really careful. You couldn't step out the front door without being mugged. The way that Giuliani cleaned up the streets was great for New York City but terrible for cinema.

WM: So what's coming up next for you?

AQ: Well, it looks like they're going to turn the book into a movie and, if it happens, I'll be writing the screenplay.

WM: Congratulations. Is it safe to say the character of Antonia Quirke will not be played by Barbra Streisand?

AQ: Yes. I think you can safely say that.

ANTONIA QUIRKE on Kathleen Turner's New Memoir

Antonia Quirke, author of Choking on Marlon Brando, reviews Kathleen Turner's new memoir Send Yourself Roses in The Times: "Oh, this is a very mad memoir indeed. I challenge you to put it down for even one moment. Up Turner rises — unfettered now, vibrant, and gives us a series of the maddest chapters I have ever read (“Hillary Clinton said I should publish my speeches”) in which she insists she likes this or that friend because they accessorise well with belts. She accepts her genius (“all my experiences and all my power and knowledge and connections and finances. And the legacy I want to leave”). She celebrates her voice (“my voice has been called smoky, husky, sexy, tobacco-cured, scotch-laden, iconic . . .”) and her need to communicate on deeper levels (“at the spa that night at dinner, I couldn’t resist reading an essay by Maya Angelou to the whole group”). She leaves her husband of more than 20 years, visits AA, supports the Long Island fishing community, lectures on stage technique at college (a personally designed course called Practical Acting: Just Shut Up and Do It!) and over the radio about the Patriot Act, challenges the Broadway audience (“f*** American puritanical hypocrisy, f*** it all”) and talks to old people on the telephone (“most of them don’t know who I am, which is rather sweet”). There may be four or five people left in New York who haven’t yet been helped by Turner. Kathleen, I am in awe. Be madder still, please. Because, really, who gives a fig about sanity anyway? Nobody ever comments on it. So, take it away, woman. Go shopping in the third person (“Kathleen Turner wants a bacon roll with no salad”). Fall in love again (“God, I’m horny”). And after Hillary Clinton has projected your speeches on the moon, get up on stage and — quite seriously, it’s so obvious — give the best Gertrude in the history of the theatre. All the while knowing that this, that more, that everything, should be yours. "

HOLIDAY GIFT SUGGESTIONS from Our Resident Film Buff

The inimitable film critic Antonia Quirke, author of Choking on Marlon Brando, knows more about actors (and also some actresses, too) than anyone else on the planet. Antonia offered us a holiday gift list for the guys out there who are looking to buy a fail-proof DVD (or two).

Gift List
by Antonia Quirke

For her:

REDS - particularly for the moment 10 minutes from the end when Warren Beatty kisses Diane Keaton at the train station after she's walked all the way from New England to Russia to see him in a pair of wooden snow boots and a bobble hat.

KING KONG - note, the 1933 version only. A deeply, deeply romantic film starring (as has been said) the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood. Tears and hugs when Kong falls to his death. Plus it's in black and white which makes anyone watching it an intellectual.

MOONSTRUCK - Was there ever an actor more capable of giving the order 'GET IN MY BED' than Nicholas Cage in this film? His Deputy Dog eyes, his hair that looks like it's always wandering off the in the wrong direction, the way he says 'SWEETIE' like you just might be his at any minute. GOD.

ON THE WATERFRONT - when Brando picks up Eve Marie Saint's glove he looks so in love it's as though his face - no, scrap that, I'm being timid, forgive me - he looks like his WHOLE BEING is subject to a kind of doubled gravity. Serious business, love.

PERSUASION - because Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a man in tights. You'll probably have to trawl Amazon for this because I don't think it was released in the States when it came out in 1995, but it is far and away the best Jane Austen adaptation ever, and directed by Roger Michell who went on to direct Enduring Love. The Irish actor Ciaran Hinds plays Captain Wentworth, the sexiest of Austen's heroes by dint of the fact he is a total MENSCH. This man has waited YEARS for the women he loves to get her act together. He's joined the Navy, sailed the high seas, travelled to the East Indies and come back again, fought in wars, made his fortune. 'You pierce my soul,' he writes his girl, the plain and procrastinating Anne Elliot, 'I am half agony, half hope. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.' The final shot, by the way, of Anne and Wentworth, united and happy on a sailing ship at sunset, is literally stolen from the Mel Gibson Mutiny on the Bounty. Buy her this, and she may realise that a boyfriend is for life, not just for Christmas. But in a good way.

For him:

THE EDGE. That's my one nomination. Really. Because every man I have ever shown this film to since it came out in 1997 - boyfriends, brothers, uncles, neighbours, you name it - not only loves it, but complains urgently about not having been introduced to it sooner. Written by David Mamet, it stars Alec Badwin and Anthony Hopkins as two men stranded in the Alaskan wilds being tracked by a killer bear. Yes, a KILLER BEAR. And this bear is a BRILLIANT actor. He's so brilliant - his name is Bart, by the way - that Sean Penn picked him to appear in his latest film Into the Wild (the only good decision that nitwit Penn has made in his entire life, apart from getting Eddie Vedder to write the soundtrack. And for casting good old Hal Holbrook too - who you'll know as Deepthroat in All the President's Men, which isn't that good a film but is still somehow one of my favourites of all time. Holbrook is amazing in All the President's Men. He stinks so much of cigarettes you become passively addicted to him. Even his HAIR looks emphysemic. Oh, ok, alright, get off my back, yes, yes, I take your point, Penn was pretty good in Carlito's Way. And Sweet and Lowdown. And when he was younger. Especially in Taps. Oh, and Fast Times. Christ, he's good in that. But he's still an arse.) Anyway, the point is, if you buy the DVD of THE EDGE there's a little extras bit where you can see Bart relaxing on set ruminatively munching on a salmon, obviously husbanding his fury for another take. A total genius.

OVERLOOK LIVE: ANTONIA QUIRKE at the Telephone Bar

Here's Antonia Quirke reading from Choking on Marlon Brando during her multimedia show at the Telephone Bar in New York earlier this week. We saw clips of Christopher Walken, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, and Gerard Depardieu, while Ms. Quirke read excerpts from her memoir. We agree with Mick LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, that Antonia Quirke is "about three seconds away from being very famous."

Meet ANTONIA QUIRKE, author of Choking on Marlon Brando, in NYC on October 29!

Here's your chance to meet London film critic Antonia Quirke, author of Choking on Marlon Brando, the widely acclaimed and sensationally funny memoir of life, love and the movies. She'll be at the Telephone Bar and Grill in New York City on Monday, October 29, from 7-9pm - talking about the movies and reading from her book. Don't miss this rare U.S. appearance!

CHOKING ON MARLON BRANDO in The New York Times Book Review

Alexandra Jacobs takes a long look at Antonia Quirke's Choking on Marlon Brando in this coming Sunday's New York Times Book Review:

"Amazing it is, and amusing, to watch her tremulously confront cinematic demigods in person: donning a jaunty polka-dot scarf to interview the dour director Todd Solondz for a BBC documentary; botching an encounter with a stoic Jeff Bridges and self-disgustingly getting drunk afterward. And her many and varied romantic foibles, while surely painful at the time they were suffered, are exceedingly comic in retrospect. It’s about time Pauline Kael met Bridget Jones..."

Keanu Reeves v. Johnny Depp

Listen to the podcast SF Gate's Mick Lasalle about 15 minutes in to hear him discuss Antonia Quirke's essay from Choking on Marlon Brando about the greatness of Keanu and the overratedness of Johnny Depp. Let your voice be heard at the poll on the right.

Antonia Quirke "Three Seconds from Being Very Famous"

Mick Lasalle, Film Critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, blogs about getting an early version of Choking on Marlon Brando by Overlook's beloved film-lover Antonia Quirke.

She's very, very good. She approaches modern actors with the obsessiveness and thoroughness with which film critics used to rhapsodize about golden age stars such as Greta Garbo. She writes brilliantly and appreciatively about people such as Kevin Costner and Matt Damon -- some of the best stuff ever written about either of these guys -- and her explanation of Keanu Reeves' appeal, including why Reeves is better than Johnny Depp (though she likes him,too), is spot-on. (Reeves is better than Depp.)

Quirke is a gifted describer and observer, a genuine and intelligent talent, and a welcome new voice. She's about three seconds from becoming very famous.

Which gives us an opportunity to change our blog poll. Is Keanu a better actor than Johnny Depp? Vote on our side bar. The Winner gets the Overlook Press Lifetime Achievement Award for Acting. Let your voice be heard!

Choking on Marlon Brando shows up in stores this July!

Overlook TV: Visit an Editor [Juliet discusses CHOKING ON MARLON BRANDO]

In our first installment of "Visit an Editor" we stop into Juliet's office to discuss Antonia Quirke's forthcoming Overlook summer title Choking on Marlon Brando. Published as Madame Depardieu and the Beautiful Strangers across the Pond, this scintillating memoir captures Antonia's search for love as she's drawn to the larger-than-life celluloid beefcakes of the silver screen. Can any available man measure up to Marlon Brando? Her trials and tribulations on the dating scene get compounded by the career arcs of her favorite actors. What do movies teach us about love? According to Antonia, *everything.*

PS: Juliet's office is way cleaner than mine.

Looking Ahead: CHOKING ON MARLON BRANDO by Antonia Quirke

Ms. Quirke got a rather good notice in the Sunday Times of London:

"Quirke is a young film critic of eccentric brilliance — she lives and breathes film, and she cannot stop living her life through a viewfinder, as if she could see it printed on celluloid. She makes ridiculous decisions, inspired by things she has seen in films. This beautifully written, shamelessly honest and deeply comical account is about Quirke’s two parallel lives. Her first life takes place in the “real” world, in which she comports herself like Bridget Jones on acid. The second, hidden life is more vivid, more passionate and ultimately more fulfilling. In this existence, played out on flickering screens, Quirke experiences ecstasy, adoration and profound psychic relief. She feels that through films she has experienced her deepest understanding of human happiness — gleams from a brighter world, too soon eclipsed by the grubby concerns of everyday life."

The Overlook Press will put CHOKING ON MARLON BRANDO out this summer! Stay tuned.