Fixed Gaze to Produce Romaine Brooks Trailer

With the relaunch of RomaineBrooks.com, the book blog of biographer Cassandra Langer, I’m pleased to announce that Fixed Gaze Films will produce the trailer for All or Nothing: Romaine Brooks (1874-1970). The biography will be published in Fall 2015 by University of Wisconsin Press.

Romaine Brooks has been in the news, on and off, ever since she got a mention in The Wall Street Journal interview of her first biographer, Meryle Secrest, who has a new book out on Schiaparelli. Brooks was also the first patron of Eileen Gray, the subject of an indie biopic starring Alanis Morissette. Now there’s a work of fiction with Romaine Brooks at the core. Read Langer’s interesting take here on Megan Mayhew Bergman’s new short story collection, just launched from Scribners.

Bergman’s book, Almost Famous Women, has been getting a lot of critical attention. A fictional Romaine Brooks shines like dark matter as the star of the central story, “Romaine Remains.”

Cassandra Langer explains how Bergman’s take on Brooks at age 93 in 1967 contradicts what Jean Loup Combemale and I discovered when he mostly transcribed (and together we translated) the only known recording of the American Modernist painter’s voice. The 90-minute recording was made that same year, composed of interviews in French conducted on several different days, and it reveals a totally different character from the one portrayed in at least six books about Brooks, Natalie Barney and their circle.

The recording appears to have been made at 20, rue Jacob in the sitting room of Natalie Barney. From time to time, we hear the door opening to a courtyard in Spring or Summer, with birds chirping loudly. Whether this records the silent footsteps and ghostly presence of Natalie or Berthe, her cook, or even Romaine’s bête noire, Janine Lahovary, we’ll never know.

Astonishingly, the source reel had been “lost” for 20 years or more, apparently misfiled, and never transcribed. Very few people alive today remember Romaine’s voice. I will never forget the day I accompanied Cassandra Langer to the Smithsonian and watched the devoted biographer put on a pair of headphones and listen to the voice of her subject for the first time. It was through Langer’s relentless quest that the recording was finally rediscovered–luckily, just in time for publication of her book.

In December, I donated the transcription and translation to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives of the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, which also houses the letters of Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney. Tulsa plans to make the materials available to researchers worldwide on the Internet. A reference copy of the transcription and translation of the 1967 audio recording is also lodged with the Romaine Brooks Papers at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC.

Pre-production is going smoothly on the book trailer that will reintroduce the artist to a new generation of fans. Charles Blatz will direct. Jaclyn Boudreau is producing.

Jaclyn has been a managing creative since moving to Virginia in 2012. As a video producer for the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, Jaclyn is involved in all aspects of video campaigns from conception and development to digital marketing to web design. Working with the Fixed Gaze team, Jaclyn is creating trailers, logos, and other motion graphics needed for the release of All or Nothing: Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) by Cassandra Langer. When she isn’t editing scripts or reviewing storyboards, I’m told, Jaclyn is “binge-watching animated shorts on YouTube, reading Hi-Fructose, and leaving wet towels on the floor of my fiancé’s apartment.”

Charles Blatz graduated from Manhattanville College in 2011 and has been experimenting with video ever since. Passionate about photography and videography, Charles moved to Arlington in 2012 to pursue a career in digital media. He works as a Media Producer and Editor at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Charles is silent on his wet towel husbandry.

This year Fixed Gaze, in partnership with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Helen Patton’s Uppergate Entertainment, will also co-produce a staged reading of SCOTCH VERDICT in London on April 8 or 9. More on that to come.