A compilation of scenes from a work-in-progress documentary about the artist Edward Gorey will screen on Oct. 30 at the M.V. Film Center. As a longtime Gorey fan, I jumped on the opportunity to write about this project. But when I reached out to Christopher Seufert, the director and producer of the film, and asked him to send me a link to what he’d be showing, he said it was still too much in-progress. Instead he sent me a digital copy of his new book, “Memento Gorey: The Last Interviews with Edward Gorey,” and a trailer he made for the book.
After a week of checking in with him — Anything yet? What about now? My deadline for this article is approaching — Seufert sent me a scene that will be included in Friday night’s work-in-progress screening, as well as a second trailer. While it wasn’t much to go on, I have to say it was worth the wait.
Edward Gorey was known for being wildly inventive, darkly humorous, and mockingly macabre. His meticulously detailed drawings and prints were often done in black and white, with some splashes of color. He published more than 100 books for children and adults, with titles such as “Amphigorey,” “The Hapless Child,” and “The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium.” Many of his books were alphabet books, unlike any others I know of (“N is for Neville who died of ennui”). MV Times readers of a certain age will recall the opening animation for the PBS show “Mystery.” That was Gorey.
Vanity Fair called his work “dark masterpieces of surreal morality.” A reporter for the Washington Post once wrote, “Through his genius and industry, he created a whole climate of the imagination.” Radio host Christopher Lydon described Gorey as an “American genius eccentric.” Gorey was also a playwright. In 1977, “Edward Gorey’s Dracula” opened on Broadway and won two Tony awards. He also created experimental theatrical pieces, often using puppets, on Cape Cod, where he lived from 1983 until his death in April 2000.
Seufert grew up on the Cape, left, and returned home with a degree in filmmaking in 1996. He wasn’t familiar with Gorey’s work, but people kept telling him, “You should check out this guy.” So he went to the bookstore, and was immediately intrigued. He explained, “I didn’t really understand his artwork or what he was trying to do. It was all fairly surreal and also nonsensical. I thought he probably would make a great documentary subject; you know, who turns out this stuff and what kind of life must this person have.”
Gorey wasn’t as reclusive as novelists J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon, but he was a private man, and gave very few interviews. Seufert wrote him a letter introducing himself. Gorey agreed to talk to him if Seufert would videotape his new play “Heads Will Roll,” which was scheduled for a two-night run in Woods Hole. Seufert suggested that instead of getting paid, they ”consider it test footage for a possible documentary.”
Seufert continued interviewing Gorey for the next few years. His final interview with him was six months before he died at the age of 75.
Seufert will be on hand after the screening Friday for a live talk to discuss the making of the film, his time spent with Gorey, and to talk about his book — which will be for sale at the event.
The book contains some of the unedited transcripts of the interviews Seufert conducted with Gorey. These are not traditional interviews. They are conversational, and often about rather random things. It also has transcripts from interviews with Gorey’s friends, and artists, like Daniel Handler of “Lemony Snicket,” whose work was influenced by Gorey. While the book doesn’t have Gorey’s artwork in it, Seufert meticulously photographed his house, which was filled with books and artifacts. But the photographs go beyond capturing Gorey’s various collections, his studio, and what he chose to hang on his walls. Some are intimately revealing; there is a photo of his unmade bed and the inside of his fridge.
Edited versions of the interviews will be in the film. But Seufert said he felt a responsibility “to put the interviews out in a raw form so that people could have them …. They were Edward’s last interviews, and so they can be a primary source material for people.” And you can find those in the book.
Seufert explained that neither the book nor the film will focus on Gorey’s artwork, noting that there are already numerous excellent books and articles examining Gorey the artist. Rather, “it’s about the person behind the work,” he said. He described his approach to making the film as a cinéma vérité approach. “There’s no narrator. It’s more of a fly-on-the-wall thing,” he explained.
That said, the few clips I saw were largely animated sequences, with voices from an interview Seufert conducted. For a Gorey fan, and I suspect anyone who is new to the magnificent world of Edward Gorey, these clips are wonderful to watch.
So as not to disqualify the film from festivals after it is completed, Seufert wanted to make absolutely sure that this event was promoted as a work-in-progress screening (yes, that’s in italics). In fact he said, “The hour that I show that night may end up being cut in the end.” I assured him that I would write about the showing as a work-in-progress, and I can assure MVTimes readers that seeing the sausage being made, especially a sausage about someone as iconoclastic and interesting as Edward Gorey, should be a worthwhile night out.
The work-in-progress film about Edward Gorey with a Q and A with filmmaker Christopher Seufert will screen at the M.V. Film Center on Oct. 30 at 7pm. Seufert will also be signing books at Edgartown Books on Oct. 31, from 2 to 4pm.
