 |
Author Stephen Vittoria
|
Stephen
Vittoria is an award-winning filmmaker and author. His last two feature
documentaries—Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary and One Bright Shining Moment:
The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern—have been embraced by audiences
worldwide. Vittoria was also a producer on two feature documentaries by Academy
Award winner Alex Gibney—Gonzo: The Life & Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
and Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place. Along with journalist
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Vittoria co-authored the three-book nonfiction series Murder
Incorporated: Empire, Genocide, and Manifest Destiny with forewords by Angela
Davis and Chris Hedges. Vittoria also contributed to an anthology (along with
Norman Mailer and Frank Deford) entitled In Times Like These: How We Pray.
Christina and the Whitefish is Vittoria’s debut novel.With a career
rooted in documentary filmmaking and deep human storytelling, Stephen Vittoria turns
inward with Christina
and the Whitefish, his debut work of fiction. The novel
reflects both a lifetime of creative exploration and a willingness to revisit
unfinished stories with fresh perspective and emotional depth. In the
conversation that follows, Vittoria traces the interesting journey behind the
book, exploring its origins, characters, themes of resilience and empathy, and
the personal discoveries that emerged along the way.
What sparked
the idea for Christina and the Whitefish? Were there specific memories
or people that shaped its foundation?
No doubt, the
project has traveled a long and winding road. Christina and the Whitefish
did not start as a novel. In 1990, the distributor of my first fictional film (Lou,
Pat & Joe D aka Black & White) had committed to financing my
next film—a screenplay entitled “Asbury Park,” which featured an ensemble cast.
The terrific actor Danny Aiello (Moonstruck, Do the Right Thing) was
slated to play Whitefish, with Daryl Hannah and Peter Horton taking the roles
of characters that don’t exist in the novel. Weeks before we were set to turn on
the cameras, the financing fell apart. A normal occurrence in the indie film
world. While searching for another financier, I rewrote the screenplay with
Whitefish as the main character. The revised project was entitled “Whitefish,”
and in 1992, a production company in Los Angeles committed to producing. You
guessed it, that deal fell apart, too. As a longtime baseball fan, strike three
didn’t interest me, so I tossed the unproduced screenplay on the shelf.
Flash forward
to 2020 and COVID. Overnight, my production company was at a standstill, and I
suddenly had nothing but time—not to mention my favorite old screenplay. For more
than a year, I drove to a quiet park in Playa Vista, California, parked under
the same Australian willows, and wrote Christina and the Whitefish.
Strange reality: I never once opened the screenplay. The arc of the story and the
characters were still very much ingrained, and I also didn’t want to be
influenced by what I wrote thirty years before. Thankfully, the novel is a much
different narrative. The introduction of Christina as a co-equal—and in many
ways, a more important character—demanded that I leave the past behind.
The foundation
of the novel was shaped by a lifelong embrace of the antiwar movement. Most of my
work, both in documentary film and nonfiction writing, has been a geopolitical
polemic of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous and dire warning: “War is
hell.” The big difference with my novel Christina and the Whitefish is
that it’s not a political book, but a personal one, a narrative that dives deep
and chronicles the lives of two uniquely rare characters.
What
inspired you to dive into self-discovery and personal challenges through
Christina’s story?
I’ve always
been inspired by the women’s movement. I’ve always embraced revolutionary
movements that fight for human rights. My political education included
incredible women like Sojourner Truth, Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, and
Angela Davis, who wrote the foreword to my last nonfiction book, Murder
Incorporated. I also had the good fortune of interviewing Gloria Steinem
for my George McGovern documentary. So, as I prepared to tackle the novel, it became
obvious to me that the “Asbury Park/Whitefish” story had way too much
testosterone on the page. Clearly, it was a time to say, “Move over, boys… make
room for Christina!”
Whitefish is a
veteran from the Vietnam War. By 1994, when the novel takes place, his pain and
trauma from that war have been somewhat tempered by time, not erased, but
tempered. Christina is a recently returning veteran from the first Gulf War—an
operation that witnessed more women deployed than any previous American war. Disconnected
by time and space, I wanted to bring these two disparate characters together,
not unlike two ships that pass in the night. It was important that Whitefish
and Christina be separated by just about everything—age, gender, background—because
empathy, resilience, healing, and love… and this isn’t romantic love, it’s
basic human love and connection… all of it needs to transcend the trappings of
society. Their very short journey together, twenty-three-year-old Christina and
forty-nine-year-old Whitefish, becomes the journey of two souls, held together
by trust and love.
Christina is
also gay. She’s been with her partner, Jaime, since high school. It was a
wonderful yet scary challenge to write about their relationship without falling
back on the tired tropes used by television and film. I’m not a woman, and I’m
not gay. I wanted desperately for their relationship to be authentic and true.
Once the first draft of the novel was complete, I asked the toughest literary
critic I knew, poet and literature professor Kathy Kremins, to read the draft.
Kathy is also gay. So, when it came time for our ZOOM chat, I was scared as
hell, convinced she’d crucify the work. She smiled, laughed, and said,
“Seriously, is there a lesbian inside of you dying to get out?”
I was duly
inspired (and relieved!). In fact, Kathy wrote the introductory poem to the
book, entitled “Wild West.”
The
boardwalk feels so alive in the novel. What does it mean to you as a writer?
The Asbury Park
boardwalk of 1994 can only be defined as a nightmarish hellscape. No doubt the
reader’s curiosity would wonder, “What was this place like before it crumbled?”
I felt it was important to discuss its lavish past—a past chock-full of stunning
architecture and intriguing, oftentimes bizarre history, one that underscored
its shining moment in time. Ultimately, it was about breathing life into the
abandoned ghosts, helping the reader to experience what Whitefish was so
valiantly trying to save. It’s funny. Many readers not familiar with Asbury
Park have told me they now want to go there.
I also focused
on the history because it’s so important to both main characters; therefore, it’s
important to the reader. Please indulge me…
In the late
1980s and early 90s, Asbury Park and its boardwalk were the epitome of
dystopian America, not unlike the midwestern Rust Belt. But in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, Asbury Park was a thriving seaside town,
attracting wealthy vacationers from Philadelphia, Northern New Jersey, and New
York—the boardwalk populated by women in petticoats carrying umbrellas and men strolling
in three-piece suits. Truly, the Gilded Age, and very racist, with harsh and
malignant segregationist policies firmly in place.
By mid-century,
Asbury Park, along with Atlantic City, was one of New Jersey’s two main resort towns.
Although, as history rolled into post-war America, tectonic shifts were well underway.
The opening of the Garden State Parkway, a superhighway that stretched along
the entire coast of New Jersey, now offered tri-state residents easy access to
more than 140 miles of sparkling coastline and brand-new resorts—a stark
departure from the two aging cities. And then, these same folks discovered air
travel—to Florida, the Caribbean, Disneyland, and the world.
During the
1960s and 70s, many sections of Asbury Park resembled a ghost town. There’s a
line in the novel that says it all: “Even the parking meters were rusted shut.”
By 1990, the boardwalk hit rock bottom. Borrowing Dylan’s term, it was “Desolation
Row.” But in my fiction, there was one exception: Whitefish’s “Club
Southside”—a venerable oasis of vibrant life and intriguing characters. In a
story that is ultimately about the resilience and healing of two human beings,
I found the dying backdrop of Asbury Park the perfect canvas for Christina’s
colorful redemption, not to mention Whitefish’s revival. This hellish
environment also offered a great analogy for the characters’ pain and trauma.
Are there
symbols or motifs in the novel you hope readers will pick up on or interpret in
their own way?
Absolutely. In
fact, I believe that once a novelist releases a fiction into the world, the
story is now the shared property of author and reader. Rarely are there wrong
interpretations. We all bring our unique sensibilities to a story, giving us
the ability for free analysis. Readers have expressed a personal interpretation
of certain aspects of the book that I never even thought about but then
immediately loved. Christina and the Whitefish offers two very distinct
opportunities for symbols that are footloose and fancy-free: one is the
appearance of a soaring hawk, a true and important character in the story… and
the other is the appearance of painter Edward Hopper in the parking lot of a
New Jersey diner, some twenty years after his death. Also, the diner itself is
very metaphoric.
If you could
visit the world of Christina and the Whitefish, where would you go
first, and why?
Easy. Drinking
with the gang at Whitefish’s hand-carved bar in the Club Southside, jukebox
wailing, trading barbs with Lil Abner, Madam Marie, Joe Fats, the three Texaco
brothers, and, of course, Whitefish and Christina. In 1994, this joint was a
sanctuary, a loving refuge for lost souls. I fell in love with every inch of
this place. When you walk in the front door, you enter an alternative universe
to what’s outside, on the boardwalk in Asbury Park.
If you could
take Christina to any historical era, which would you pick, and how would she
handle it?
I believe that
Christina is an old soul. She could exist in the Roman Empire but standing
right next to the women who challenged the Roman establishment, women like Fulvia, Zenobia, and Agrippina the
Younger. She could hang out with Abigail Adams in colonial Massachusetts or
Angela Davis 1960s Oakland. You get the picture.
If Christina
had a personal motto or mantra (even if it’s not in the book), what would it
be?
As we discussed
earlier, the book is not a political narrative. It’s a personal narrative,
although there’s a powerful antiwar thread that runs through it like a main
circuit cable. As the story moves into Act Three, Christina would tell her
fellow space travelers, “Don’t let the bastards make the unthinkable normal.”
As a writer,
do you feel like you’re learning from your characters as you write, or are you
more their guide?
I’m a very
organic writer and absolutely learn from my characters. If you’re truly in sync
with the characters as flesh and blood people, you’ll anticipate their needs
and desires, what bothers them, what turns them on, how they communicate, and,
of course, their dialogue. During the process, I was constantly surprised by
twists and turns that I didn’t expect. Some of these were major shifts in tone
or structure.
If Christina
could meet a character from another book or movie, who would she click with,
and what would they talk about?
I love this
question, and I immediately thought of “Offred” in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Besides Margaret Atwood being one of my favorite novelists, her amazing
character of Offred (in the television series, her previous, real name is
revealed as “June”) is courageous yet struggles with constant fear, like
Christina. Offred has haunting memories of her recent past life, before
tragedy, before trauma, like Christina. Offred demonstrates great intelligence,
resilience, and the innate ability for survival against debilitating odds, just
like Christina. Atwood’s protagonist exhibits active empathy for the others also
oppressed in Gilead’s draconian system. Indeed, Offred’s been stripped of her
previous identity. In many ways, Christina suffers a similar fate.
I do not doubt
that Christina would join ranks with Offred and the other handmaidens, fighting
back for their agency and rights in the repressive and über-patriarchal society
known as Gilead. They’d discuss the meaning of independence, of freedom, and
together, how they could bust apart the chains that bind. I also think they’d
agree that Whitefish is a cool guy and that the Club Southside has terrific
food.
More on Stephen
Vittoria: https://stephenvittoria.com/
.jpg)
%20(2).jpg)
