Interview with Al Young

The following interview took place on April 3, 1978, the day before Young's reading as part of USCs "Contemporary Literature Week."Following the car ride from LA. International, lunch in Venice, an hour or so at the beach in Santa Monica watching workmen repave a parking lot, several rounds of beer in my backyard, and so forth, we got down to "business" in my office at USC, both of us gazing out the window from time to time at the giant neon cat on the Felix Chevrolet car lot across the street.NM: I thought we might start by talking about the writing you've done in relation to the film industry.There's mention in one book-I think ifs O'Brien's Interviews with Black Writers-of you working on a script for the autobiography of Dick Gregory.You also, I understand, did the preliminary synopsis for Sparkle, though your version ended up not being used.Then you worked with Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby on the script for A Piece of the Action, and most recently the script for the film version of your own Sitting Pretty.Have you found writing for films a good experience?Has it been something you've benefited from?AY: It's been a very good experience.Working for Poitier after the Sparkle job, and later doing the screenplay for Sitting Pretty, really made me aware, first of all, of just how precisely worked out the media images that bombard us everyday are.Things don't happen by accident.Somebody has planned the effect in advance.They want these images to stimulate.The professional danger for an imaginative writer, a novelist, is that it can block your peripheral vision.In other words, I know a lot of my steam, a lot of my energy

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