MELVYN BRAGG: Britain’s Renaissance Man

Melvyn Bragg could called a modern-day Renaissance man. He’s written 14 books and the screenplays for “Isadora” and “The Music Lovers.”

He’s best known, however, as the host, editor and chief interviewer for the award-winning arts profile series “The South Bank Show,” which is produced in Great Britain on London Weekend Television and airs approximately twice a month in the United States on Bravo.

On Thursday, Bravo will air “The South Bank Show’s” September, 1990 interview with controversial novelist Salman Rushdie. Though “60 Minutes” and “Nightline” recently have aired interviews with Rushdie, this was the first in-depth interview he had given since he went into hiding two years ago after receiving Ayatollah Khomeini’s death threat because of his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Upcoming “South Bank Show” profiles include the late movie comic Stan Laurel, artist Roy Lichtenstein, theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh, actor/writer Steve Martin, novelist John Updike and playwright August Wilson.

Bragg discussed the fine art of interviewing during a brief visit in Los Angeles with Susan King.

How did you get the interview with Salman Rushdie?

I rang up his publisher and said that I thought it obviously would be impossible, as I understood it, to get a visual interview with Salman, but I would be happy to get a sound interview. To make a long story short, Salman rang me up. He was more in hiding than he is now, and we started to talk. He consulted his people as he calls them, the security people who take care of him and they are awesome, too, and he said “OK. My people say it’s OK. Let’s do it. I would like to do it as a normal ‘South Bank Show’ and I don’t want to be (shot) in half-shadows like I am a prostitute or criminal. I want to do it as I am.”

So we arranged a location. The crew didn’t know where they were going and they didn’t know the subject. I actually told them I was doing a program with a woman and they arrived at the location, which is heavily guarded, and we did it there. We spent a day doing the interview.

Rushdie talkes more about his craft than his past two years in hiding.

I deliberately interviewed him about his fiction and not his situation, because the normalization of Rushdie was the important thing here. He had become, in a popular mind, an issue or a monster, and so what we did was reclaim him as a writer. He was political in one sense. He did answer the questions on “The Satanic Verses” very carefully.

On the average, how many hours or days do you spend with a subject?

It depends. One day is the minimum. When we did the (John) Updike show we spent three days with him in Reading, Pa. We took him back to this town he was brought up in and spent three days with him. You need at least a day.

Sometimes you can sit down and just do it. Saul Bellow is easy in that respect. What I wanted to talk to Bellow about was drawn from the particular novel of the time in relationship to his other novels. He speaks so fluently that after two or three hours you got it. Sometimes you need to rummage around and it pays off.

But you must have interviewed some subjects who were not very forthcoming.

Yes, quite a few. Recently, there was Roy Lichtenstein, which we showed in early October in England. He is interviewed very rarely. He had seen Bravo and he wanted to be on “The South Bank Show” and he was extremely difficult. He doesn’t want to commit.

He doesn’t want to say much. His whole style is reactive, laconic. Given that with our program the artist should be the center of the program, that made it rather difficult.

On the other hand, Lichtenstein realized that difficulty after about two days and started to contribute. He is never going to be eloquent, but something strange happens then. If someone is not speaking at great length, but still trying, then celluloid is sympathetic to that person. By any stretch of the imagination can it be called a good interview, but you could call it a very truthful encounter in terms of Lichtenstein’s truthfulness. When he began to say things, you would believe them completely.

The special on Stan Laurel sounds fascinating.

You got to have limitations on the program. But occasionally we do dead guys if you get something particular. With Benjamin Britten, which we did several years ago, I was tempted into that by some unseen home-movie footage. I was tempted into the Laurel show with stuff from early on in his career and by some home-movie footage.

Once or twice a season we can risk (doing a show on a deceased person). Sometimes we have the advantage of doing both (laughs). We started Andy Warhol when he was alive and finished it after he popped off. Sometimes, it’s a half-dead show.

“The South Bank Show: Salman Rushdie” airs Thursday at 5 p.m. and repeats Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. on Bravo.