Printed
and bound by
Legion Office Works, Castlemaine
© Copyright Peter Tammer 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9804360-0-6
Cover
photos: Richard Leigh
A
Baker's Dozen
In October 2006 I wrote the first of these stories and sent it to some
friends for feedback. Their responses were favourable so I wrote another.
Then my friend Ruben Mowszowski sent me some of his own stories from Capetown,
as well as two by Ken Barris, one of which was Ken's astonishing "The
Flying Room".
Then John Flaus sent me a slender volume of stories by an English writer, A. E. Coppard, the title story of which, "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me", completely bowled me over.
With such a fertile mix floating around in my mind other stories seemed to come easily and in no time I had "The Baker's Dozen".
Writing these stories was both a lot of fun and a way of putting my insomnia to practical use.
Interview with Albert Maysles
Some of my ex-students approached me to interview Albert Maysles, of the
famous Maysles Brothers team, which was responsible, amongst other things,
for three magnificent observational documentaries:
"Gimme Shelter", "Salesman" , "Grey Gardens".
I had often shown "Salesman" and "Grey Gardens" to various groups of students at Swinburne F&TV School, or at the VCA when we transferred from Swinburne. So when Richard Leigh, Katherine Speller and Catherine Gough-Brady asked if I would be interested to interview Albert, I could not believe my luck that such a deal was possible. In 1999 I had the great pleasure of chatting with Albert via telephone connection to USA for approximately 45 mins. Richard, Catherine and Katherine must also be thanked for helping me with the research which supported the interview.
This is the transcript which appeared in the online journal Documenter way back in January 2000.