He found a great way to achieve both: he started the “Three-minute Fiction” contest, open to any work of original fiction under six hundred words, and had it judged by the professor he so admired, James Wood. Yeah, that James Wood.

The first two rounds of TMF brought in over ten thousand entries. Many entries were posted on the site, winners were invited on the show and had the pleasure of hearing Wood read their story aloud.  The first round had no restrictions besides word count, but in order to make the competition more challenging for the second, Wood provided the first line: “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” Now the third round, judged by NPR book reviewer Alan Cheuse, requires people to tell a story about a specific photograph, now posted on the site. The forth will be judged by Ann Patchett. God knows what she’ll make you do.

There’s a lot that’s exciting about this project: it gets non-writers writing, and there’s enough interest in hearing fiction that it’s being featured on what’s generally a news and public affairs show. And though micro-fiction/flash fiction/short short fiction is increasingly popular, now it’s essentially being promoted by our most celebrated and controversial literary critic. Regardless of what you think of Wood, having him involved in the project lends the form a lot of credibility. Now maybe you’ll find the courage to show your parents that short you just got published. Now maybe instead of nodding and frowning with an obvious “you could have been a dentist” thought-bubble floating above their head, they’ll think, “Oh, this is what that nice British man was talking about on smart people radio a while back.”

Guy Raz spoke to me about TMF from his home in DC, where he and his one-year old son Henry were snowed in.

Tell me why you created “Three-Minute Fiction” and how you got James Wood involved:

“Last year, I was at Harvard on a Neiman Fellowship to study national security related issues, and I decided to take James Wood’s Post-War British and American Fiction class. It was an incredible class and a wonderful diversion from the other things I was studying. We chatted now and again after class and I knew that I really wanted to get him on NPR when I came back. I was also thinking of a way to create a more interactive feature on ATC on the weekend and I thought fiction might be a good way to bring listeners in and create a tighter connection to the show and the people who listen to it.

As my fellowship was wrapping up I called Wood and said let’s meet for coffee and we did and I told him my idea. ATC is an hour on the weekend, so I’d ask people to write a piece of fiction that could be read in under three minutes and to see how it went. I asked him if he’d be the judge, and he said yes. It was just serendipitous that I happened to take his class.”

The response was enormous.  Any idea why the contest was such a hit?

“The stories can’t be more than six hundred words, so it’s a great mental exercise. You have to deliver a narrative or a piece of a narrative and you have to do it quickly. You don’t have the time for self-indulgence or literary flourishes. It was a challenge for people who practice writing and was something that seemed doable to people who don’t write three thousand words a day as professionals.

Of course, James Wood is such a well-known person in the literary world, so I think a lot of people wanted to see what he would think of their story. And Wood has this great voice; I think a lot of people were interested in having James Wood read their story out loud.

The response threw all of us for a loop. I just didn’t expect so many people to get involved but they did and that was it. The homepage for TMF was of the most visited parts of NPR.org last year, and we only started it in July.”

What are your thoughts about getting work from “writers” vs. “non-writers?”

“The contest is really for everybody, and it’s a big experience for the show as well, and in order for it to work we need everyone who’s even thinking about taking part to try it.

The winner of the last round, Cathy Formusa, is a massage therapist.  Round one winner was Molly Reid.  She’s a professional, unpublished writer (can I get a that on a t-shirt?) and a waitress and a part-time English teacer.  One of the most incredible submissions was from Teresa Amend.  She’s not a professional writer, she’s never attempted to be a professional writer, but she’s a great writer. She has subsequently submitted commentary to our program on everything from Alzheimer’s to breast cancer, and we’ve put it on our show unrelated to three-minute fiction.”

What’s new for this round of the contest?

“In this round we have a photograph to narrow the contest and make it more challenging.

Additionally, we needed to figure out a way to make TMF a part of our show that we could manage, and we realized we needed a set of readers we could trust. We received so many entries for the past two rounds and they took a long time to process. The staff of our show is only eight people, including myself. Everybody on staff was reading these stories; they spent their weekends and nights reading them, in addition to doing everything else they had to do for the show. And they were flagging their best stories and giving them to James. James ended up reading at least one thousand stories himself.

For this round producer Kate Davidson reached out to the Iowa Writers Workshop and asked if they’d be readers for the first wave of submissions. Now we have twenty MFA students taking part in the process. We’ll send our selections to Alan and he’ll take it from there.”

When I shared my thoughts about what the contest might do for micro-fiction, Raz said.  “If it’s adding to the momentum of something that’s out there that’s amazing.”  So now it’s up to you to make it even more amazing.  Do it.  Nerds everywhere will be listening.

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Mythic creatures abound in Laura van den Berg’s debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, but the fear and grief that haunt her characters are the beasts they’ll never escape.

I remember reading the title story in One Story last year. I was in the middle of a busy busy day, but I glanced at the cover to see if I knew the writer. I didn’t, but the title was enough to get to me to the first page. I don’t remember what I was supposed to be doing at the time, but I know it didn’t get done for a while, because after reading the first two paragraphs there was no way I could put it down. The story is about Celia, who must follow her biologist mother around the world after being plucked from high school and a promising swimming career. While her mother studies lemurs in Madagascar, Celia wanders the island trying to understand who and where she’s supposed to be in her newly upturned life. Forbidden from calling her mother “mom,” she’s suspended in an awkward role between child and adult. She can’t be a kid anymore, but her mother doesn’t let her be a grown-up either, because that would mean Celia could leave and her mother would have only her woe and misguided research for company.

What is most admirable here, and throughout this impressive debut collection, is van den Berg’s ability to work with characters in different states of flight and confusion. Celia knows where she does not want to be: not back in New York in high school; not in Alaska with her father, who went for an ice-fishing trip and stayed; not in her mother’s developing country du jour. She wants to be in the water, again suspended between two places, but this time by choice. Her mother tells her she doesn’t have the stamina or guts for it, but Celia isn’t doesn’t listen, having finally embraced open water and the feeling that, at any moment, “she might vanish within it.”

Laura van der Berg

Water features prominently in van den Berg’s stories, which makes sense for a book full of characters adrift in an unknowable world. In “Where We Must Be,” a failed actress takes a job playing Big Foot in a theme park that caters to people who want a Big Foot encounter. She’s involved with her neighbor, a thirty-year-old with cancer, who, as he grows weaker, asks to be taken to the lake because he’s had a dream in which “the world is made of water.” She takes him, against her better judgment, and obliges when he asks her to teach him how to float. She also obliges, finally, when he asks her to do her Big Foot roar, which she’s never done outside the theme park. He drifts out to the middle of the lake while she roars into the darkness, giving voice to the hurt neither of them wants to name.

In “Up High in the Air,” a etymologist’s cuckolded husband obsesses over a mythical beast that lives in Lake Michigan while she tells a friend that, to her, “all bodies of water all look the same… they’re places to get lost in.” And in “Inverness,” a botanist envies a man’s devotion to his search for the Loch Ness Monster and his excitement for what he might find. Having found the flower she’d come looking for in Scotland, she tries to lose it—because being done with her search means having to find a new purpose and return home, where the man who left her now shares their house with another woman.

Absent characters often hover around the edges of these stories. Children long for dead parents; husbands deceased, divorced, or ignored wander in and out of thoughts. Creatures both real and imagined haunt people who fear or pursue them. The main characters themselves are often only half there, and their inability to understand their world means that in many ways it doesn’t matter if they’re in Massachusetts or Madagascar. But alongside all the loss and longing, van den Berg works in a lot of humor and unexpected details that add levity. There’s the woman playing Big Foot, of course, or the mother who calls her daughter to say her hair is on fire. You can imagine lesser writers coming up with just one of these quirky (retch!) ideas and trying to build a collection off of it. But van den Berg’s careful deployment of them within such complex and moving stories removes any potential “wackiness” because the details feel real, and remind you of the strange things you encounter every day.

Reading What the World Will Look Like, you may find yourself feeling as unsure and hungry as the people in it. It’s a nice feeling though, because in the space between stories, you savor the realization that the writing is “working.” Though the characters tell you (or tell their pet fish) that they don’t understand the world, you understand them, and are reminded that no one is ever as alone as they think.

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El-Sayed, a dusty Bedouin village in the Israeli desert, is home to the world’s largest community of deaf people. A genetic defect is responsible, and its seemingly random occurrence within families is accepted and expected; most seem to be a happy, functional mix of deaf and hearing children and adults. The community has its own complex system of sign-language, and deaf and hearing are encouraged to intermarry.  Because deaf people are fully integrated into life in El-Sayed—as they should be everywhere—they don’t feel they are dealing with a burden.  In fact, we meet numerous deaf people who say they feel bad for those who can hear because they are constantly surrounded by chatter.  One little girl in the movie sweetly says that she, like many others, prefers to be deaf, and that if God could give her the ability to hear, she wouldn’t want it.

Although God does not give anyone the ability to hear in the movie, the Israeli government unexpectedly does.  For an unknown reason, the government—who historically treats Bedouin settlements very poorly—offers free cochlear implants to all deaf children. The offer is received with skepticism.  Deaf adults scoff at the idea that hearing is important or beneficial, and others, having heard horror stories about complications arising from the operation, are concerned with how well the device actually works.

One family decides to go through with the operation for their two-year old son Muhammad, who is the only deaf member of his family.  His experience is physically and emotionally painful, and although the procedure is free, it is not easy. The repeated trips to the hospital are long and frustrating, and the implant’s success is hampered by the fact that the village does not have twenty-four hour electricity, which the device requires. When the device malfunctions, and when Muhammad does not begin speaking when he should, his father second-guesses his decision. The film takes a neutral stance on the parents’ decision, but it’s impossible not to root for them once it’s been made, particularly during the boisterous scenes where Muhammad’s siblings try to teach him to speak.

While some people in the community think the operation was pointless at best, and tragic at worst, it’s never a surprise when a family wants their son to be as prepared for success as possible.  The ability to hear is never glamorized, but the advantages that one assumes comes with it are hard to ignore, particularly in the case of young Ruwayda, an aspiring filmmaker.  While her professional dreams don’t yet extend beyond the village, it’s impossible not to wonder how difficult her path would be if she left.  The outside world might not be so hospitable.  In addition to facing intense prejudice about her religion and ethnicity, she’d be confronting mainstream society’s inability to deal with people who are differently-able.

This is, of course, very interesting stuff, but the movie does not have the impact you expect or want. Its greatest weakness is its scope, which is too tight as opposed to too broad, the typical problem of many documentaries.  The introduction of new technology that could permanently change life in El-Sayed feels enormous and fraught, and the place itself is so interesting that you want to know and see more.  But for whatever reason—access, mistrust, shyness on the part of the subjects—the filmmakers follow only a few people on both sides of the conflict.  While humbleness can be a great strength in a documentary, in the case of Voices from El-Sayed, it leaves you with questions, and with the feeling that there isn’t much of a controversy at all.  It would have been nice to have more perspectives in the film, to see how it was playing out on a larger scale. Without this, the film commands only a passing interest, despite its naturally intriguing story and some impressive sound and camera work.  Sadly, when added up, the movie’s fractured strengths still don’t make it the movie it could have been, and you leave feeling like you missed something.

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In the beginning of Valentino: The Last Emperor, the documentary about fashion designer Valentino Garavani and his final days as the head of his company, a reporter asks Giancarlo Giametti, Valentino’s longtime business partner and one-time lover, “How would you define, in one word, your choice to live in another man’s shadow?” After only a slight pause, Giammetti smiles and replies, “Happiness.”

Valentino: The Last Emperor is a well-crafted, intimate look into the world of Valentino, one full of  fawning celebrities, gorgeous dresses, pampered pugs, private jets, fried-to-a-crisp suntans and, naturally, drama. But the heart of the movie is his relationship with Giametti, which is both incredibly complicated and enviously simple. It was this relationship that intrigued director and producer Matt Tyrnauer, who met the men in 2005 when he wrote a story on Valentino for Vanity Fair, where he is a Special Correspondent. Tyrnauer, who’d never made a movie before, wanted to capture what he refers to as their “uber-marriage,” a partnership spanning forty-five years that is, by all accounts, what allowed Valentino to become who he is—the last emperor of high fashion.

Tyrnauer spent over two years with Valentino and Giancarlo. Two hundred and seventy hours of footage were edited down into what Tyrnauer humbly calls, “a tiny little documentary,” a documentary that has, in fact, been an enormous success. The movie has been playing for over twelve consecutive weeks across America.

The Rumpus had a chance to talk with Matt after he’d just returned from San Antonio, Texas, where the movie recently opened.

Rumpus: Can you tell us more about how you came up with the idea for the movie and how you pulled it off?

Tyrnauer: I was assigned a story on Valentino for Vanity Fair and I went in as a total fashion…I don’t want to say idiot, but novice. I am an Italiaholic—beyond an Italiaphile—and I was really pleased to go to Rome for two weeks and do the piece, but I didn’t hope for Valentino being interesting. But when I met Valentino and Giancarlo I became very interested in their story. I cast the magazine story as the story of a marriage, and it was the first time anyone had ever written about both of them.

I asked them to do the movie right after the article was published because their relationship blew me away. Their world is so cut off from reality. Valentino lives in the fantasy bubble that Giancarlo maintained for him for half a century.  They agreed to do the film without too much prodding. Then I had dilemma—I had never made movie before, though I always wanted to, especially about some of these amazing characters I’ve met.

The one thing I knew I wanted to do was capture the relationship and I started plotting how to do that. I hired the best people I could find to make the movie because I knew as a novice I needed a lot of support.  We dove in because I didn’t want them to change their minds.  We just showed up immediately with a camera—a Sony Z1, which is a small HD camera. This camera had just come out, so we were lucky to have that quality of technology that was also compact. I was worried about was doing a fly-on-the wall film, which is what I wanted to do, with huge high-definition cameras, because they are very intrusive.

The people we hired we also very experienced. Tom Hurwitz was the cinematographer and Peter Miller was the sound man—they’re the leading cinema verite camera and sound people. The editor was Bob Eisenhardt, who is the leading verite editor. Between them they’ve probably made more than 200 movies, and they were enormously helpful in guiding me through the process.

Rumpus: How large was the crew?

Tyrnauer: It was basically a one-camera movie. For the big party at the end, we had three or four cameras, but on a daily basis we used one. The crew ranged from twelve to fourteen for the big parties and events and it was two most of the time, which was myself and the co-producer Frederic Tcheng. We shot most of the movie together and with Fred mostly operating the camera.

Rumpus: Who are your favorite directors? Did they influence this movie?

Tyrnauer: I had a lot of ideas about movies and have studied film all my life.  My favorite directors are Robert Aldrich, John Ford, Fellini and Robert Altman, and I looked to all of them for inspiration.

Rumpus: The movie would have been important no matter what, but because you were able to capture Valentino’s final year, it takes on major historical significance because you really captured the end of an era. How did the events that took place shape the movie?

Tyrnauer: No one knew what Valentino was going to do because he never said what he was going to do until the day he announced his retirement. When we started the first year no one talked about retiring, and when Valentino started getting questions about it in year two he kept denying it. We thought it was a bit of a drama that we had to follow and it turned out to be an amazing third act for the film. That was the documentarian’s luck—we were in the right place at the right time.

When we started, couture week in Paris was a full week, now it’s three days. There’s no doubt we were there as the era slipped away. You have Lagerfeld and Valentino and that’s about it.  They are the last two and we got them together at the end of this movie. I was trying to plot a way to get Largerfeld into the movie and I was composing letters and going through mutual acquaintances and then he just walked right into our camera, which was great.

Rumpus: What is the significance of Valentino’s retirement, and how is the fashion world reacting?  In literature and journalism everyone’s lamenting the “death of print.” Is it anything like that?

Tyrnauer: It’s more profound than that. There’s still Barnes and Noble, and you go to a newsstand and see hundreds of magazines and newspapers. Couture was always a niche market, so you just have to look at it in its isolated frame.

In the 20th century, women at a certain level of society were required to dress in three different outfits a day, more or less, and they were expected to have their clothing handmade.  At the closing of the 19^th century all clothes were handmade and there were different levels of that. By the end of the 20th century, only some clothes were handmade and there were certain levels of that. Couture was the highest level of that, so it was always something that was for the few, and the few became fewer after World War II. In the second half of the 20^th century, women started to work and they didn’t have to change three times a day and they started to wear pants and jeans.  And then in the 60’s there was a complete social revolution and couture became even more of a niche.

Valentino was born at exactly the right time to be Valentino. He was born to come into the workplace in the 50’s when there was huge economic boom and things were still done the old way. In the 60’s the jet set began and the world changed in his favor because there were more rich people and they needed clothes to go to all these parties. In the 70’s things started to settle down, but he was at the top of his profession so he got all the clients.  He was the name, along with Yves Saint Laurent. Karl Lagerfeld came into the picture and Givenchy, but he was already at the top and he stayed there.

One of the great features of his story is that he’s the longest surviving kind of god of fashion. By the 80’s and 90’s it shifted to Hollywood and he was right there. Then he brought it in for the perfect landing just months before the global economy collapsed. What better timing could he possibly have?

Rumpus: In your Vanity Fair article you mention that Valentino has a long-term partner, but watching the movie that’s easy forget because we’re so focused on his relationship with Giancarlo and we never meet his boyfriend.  Their relationship is so intensely symbiotic that it’s hard to imagine there’s room for anyone else.

Tyrnauer: Valentino has been with his boyfriend Bruce Hoeksema for more than twenty years.  He and Giancarlo were together as lovers in the 60’s and they stayed together in what I call a kind of uber-marriage. They are the patriarchal figures in this sprawling family that includes a big entourage of workers and friends and lovers. It’s a particular way of conducting your life. They are definitely inseparable, and there have been other people in their lives over the decades.

Is there a rule that you have to sleep with the same person for fifty years in order to be devoted to them?  I don’t think so. That’s the fantasy that a lot of people have and project onto people, and I find that a lot when I talk about them. People want to project this fantasy of everlasting, eternal sexual fidelity onto people because that’s what a love story is. Well, this is a little different, but it’s about an extraordinary friendship and a long-lasting relationship that has a great deal of love. And therefore it’s a love story. It s not traditional, it doesn’t conform to an American perspective on togetherness, but it’s a legitimate love story. That’s the way most people perceive it, that’s the way I perceive it and I think that’s the way most people perceive it as well. It seems to inspire a lot of people, which I’m happy about.

Rumpus: You hear stories about partnerships, particularly romantic ones, where there is one larger-than-life artist and a person supporting them to their own detriment—the long-suffering literary wife who stays up all night typing her husband’s manuscripts, for example, or someone who sacrifices their dreams so the other person can achieve theirs.  It’s a negative story, but theirs is different.

Tyrnauer: I think that’s really the point of the film.  Giancarlo completely devoted himself to another person and together they went on this incredible journey and kind of ruled the fashion world, but no one knew who Giancarlo was. Now finally they do and that’s the poignant thing. Valentino finally thanks Giancarlo on film when he receives France’s Legion d’Honneur, and he never had before that.

Rumpus: Do you think we can learn something from their relationship?

Tyrnauer: I think we can learn a lot. We can learn about keeping it together, about friendship and devoting yourself to another person, which is what Giancarlo did.  After a screening in New York, I did a Q+A and a group came up afterwards and said that their professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian had sent them to see the movie to study their relationship.

They were very successful, and it’s very hard to work with the person who you’re in love with or have been in love with or are sleeping with or not sleeping with and are in love with.  It’s very hard to do that and make it last because ego gets in the way.

Rumpus: Was working with them difficult?

Tyrnauer: It’s always a balancing act. You have to know when to leave, you have to know when to press and then when to back off.  I’m used to dealing with really big egos, so I used those skills. But they are very difficult. They are into drama. Valentino was quitting the movie all the time. He would walk off the set and then Giancarlo would come in and say, “I’m sorry, we’re not doing the movie anymore.”  I knew they were bluffing the whole time, more or less.

I think when we started filming for a second year and they saw we had the money to finish the film they started to pay more attention. It got more serious and they got more difficult in a certain way because they were a little more frightened.

And I think you know what they thought of the film—they hated it. That was a bit of a trial, but in the end they were very brave because they did give me final cut.

Rumpus: When did they come around?

Tyrnauer: The logjam broke at the Venice Film Festival. We had a huge red carpet, and Valentino being an icon in Italy he had five hundred paparazzi waiting for him. The movie played to a full house and we got a very big standing ovation and Valentino was overwhelmed.  He saw how it played to a general audience and he saw that people worshipped him even more and he came around instantly, though they had threatened to not show up.

Rumpus: But the movie was going to be released no matter what.

Tyrnauer: The contract had an anti-injunction clause, which meant that they could not stop the movie legally. You need that if you’re going to make a movie that is your movie.

Rumpus: What’s next for you?  You’re still writing for Vanity Fair, but is there another movie in the works?

Tyrnauer: I’m dying to do something else, but I haven’t picked a project yet.

Rumpus: Any interested in doing a fictional, narrative film?

Tyrnauer: It’s all telling stories. I’m open to anything.

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