I went to the O Cinema in Wynwood Saturday night to see Tom Wolfe Gets Back to Blood. It begins with an epigraph from Wolfe - uttered by him later in the documentary - about the need for writers to get out from behind their desks. The film had me from the start.
Though in the end it disappointed. Wolfe is treated with great respect, almost reverence; even his outlandish attire (which looks even more ridiculous in Miami, especially since it didn't include a hat) is given a rational explanation, not just by interviewees but by Wolfe himself, who explains that the older one gets, the more clothing one should wear, to cover up sagging skin. Though he confesses that when he goes to the beach he wears a Speedo.
It is probably the most fascinating revelation in the film. Throughout, Wolfe says very little of interest, and when he does speak it's in a weak, hesitant, diffident voice that often gets drowned out by background noise. The most trenchant comment comes from former Miami police chief John Timoney who says that New York is about money, Washington power, LA fame and Miami sex.
I was startled to see that Wolfe pulled out a pen only twice, and wrote on a flimsy sheet of paper. And the longest jotting was not to record a conversation but to draw the floor plan of a house. Director Oscar Corral, speaking after the film, said that when Wolfe talks to people he's more interested in their accents and inflections and mannerisms than in what they're actually saying.
Still, it was instructive to observe another writer's legwork - and satisfying to note how, while meeting a representative sampling of Miami residents, Wolfe was never really inserted into the life of the place. He was always an observer, never a participant. But that's what happens when you wear a tab collar in the subtropics.
And I enjoyed picking out familiar landmarks. ('He's in the courtyard of Books & Books!') Mitchell Kaplan appears, as well as a number of Herald people, but unfortunately no local novelists are asked their opinions of a long-time New Yorker who parachutes into their city dressed in a white suit with a handkerchief but no notebook in the pockets and then publishes a 700-page novel on the place.
