reveries - adrienne brodeur

FEBRUARY 2002

It had been maybe five or six months since Adrienne Brodeur had written that letter to Francis Ford Coppola. About the last thing she expected was to hear from him.

She came home that night to her apartment, kind of late. It was about eleven o'clock or something.

The phone rang, and so she picked up.

"Is this Adrienne Brodeur?"

He didn't quite pronounce her name right. But she said "yes."

And he said, "This is Francis."

And she completely had no idea. Francis who? Right, exactly. Just like that. And he said, "Francis Coppola."

Oh.

Adrienne's pulse skipped a bit, yes. But then the two of them just had a lovely conversation about…short fiction.

It just happened that both Adrienne and Francis liked narrative drive, and big stories. Stories that you got lost in. Francis asked Adrienne for her email address and they spent several months going back and forth, talking about stories and basically conceiving of a new and different kind of literary magazine. Then arrived the moment when Francis said, "Do you want to do this?"

Adrienne said, "yes."

About a year later -- about five years ago now -- Zoetrope All-Story was launched. It's a tabloid, published on newsprint. It features short stories, essays and one-act plays. No poems. Each issue is illustrated by a different artist. Skeptics like to say that it's nothing more than an incubator for Coppola's film projects. They don't much like that he's a literary outsider and that Adrienne is (was) a literary nonentity.

Anyone who bothers to reads Zoetrope isn't likely to remain a skeptic for long, though. Doesn't matter, actually, at this point. When Zoetrope bested The New Yorker and the rest of the literary establishment for the National Magazine Award last year, the critics pretty much stopped their sniping.

Adrienne's story is a great one -- especially for anyone who ever had an idea as nutty as writing to a famous movie director on the off chance it might lead somewhere. She had simply heard from various sources that Francis Ford Coppola liked short stories. She was reading at the Paris Review at the time and instead of being twenty-one and trying to break into the publishing world, she was twenty-nine. She was just trying to find something special. Something exciting and exceptional.

So, what exactly did you say, Adrienne, in that letter?

I don't honestly know anymore. I wrote it a long, long time ago. I don't have a copy of it. I think I pretty much must have said something to the effect that I understood that he was interested in short fiction and I told him a bit about my own interest in it. I wish I still did have a copy.

It wasn't necessarily a letter with the idea for the magazine?

No. It didn't propose it directly. I mean, the magazine evolved. That whole first year it became different things along the way. I have different little drawings of it on various napkins for a good year. So I can't say that I had this clear idea that I proposed to him and then he said, "Yes, I'd like to do this." That certainly was not the way it happened. We shared a strong mutual interest in a writing forum and we were both open to a lot of ways of exploring it.

What do you bring to the magazine, ultimately, and what does Francis bring to it?

That's changed over time. In the beginning we conceived of it together. He was very much a part of the creative process all along, although as the magazine goes I should say he's not at all involved in the editorial. I read and select and commission the stories. I handle all of the editorial.

The magazine was definitely his idea -- or both of our ideas -- I don't know if that makes sense. If you're asking on a day-to-day basis of running the magazine, he has a lot of creative input. We talk about the guest designers, he talks about the look of the magazine. He has ideas, but he's not an editor or in anyway does he take on an editorial role, which is as you would hope with the publisher.

The magazine's format is intriguing. There’s nothing quite like it out there.

And that is very much his idea.

The idea to use newsprint?

Newsprint, oversize, tabloid -- these were all things that were very much his idea. He had a real keen insight as to how he wanted the magazine to look. Rather than the little literary magazine, that's precious -- that you put away on your bookshelf -- Zoetrope is the everyman's literary journal.

You put it under your arm, you put it in your pocket, you take it in your purse, you rip it up, you read it, you fold it, you make paper airplanes, whatever you want to do with it. There's nothing that is intimidating about this. It's supposed to be very user friendly. It calls to mind some of the old pulp fiction magazines, but the look of it was all Francis.

A lot of people had thought that short stories were kind of a lost art, but you're in the process of proving them wrong.

We're trying to!

How?

Well, I don't know that short stories are a lost art because stories have always had their place. I mean, it's the oldest medium, if you will, to tell the human saga. But I think literary journals haven't always been the best conduits of stories.

A lot of literary journals kind of land with a thud at the doorstep and people aren't as excited about them as they should be. That's for a variety of reasons, but one of things that we try to do with Zoetrope is embrace what is entertaining and wonderful and fun about stories, right along with their educational value and all the heavier aspects of them.

Who exactly reads Zoetrope?

At their core they are lovers of short stories and people who really get lost in a good story. It's a very well rounded audience. In fact, when we did our very first reader survey, which was about three years ago now, we had these ideas of who our readers were but we were really wrong. We thought they were mostly writers, very young, very edgy.

In fact, Zoetrope attracts a broad range of ages. We have readers practically from their twenties to their eighties. I think the average age, or the median age, is roughly early forties. It's people who have leisure time or who really prioritize reading. They're well educated, they have money, and they are able to pick some of the finer things. It seems they really enjoy knowing what's out there that's new and intellectually being on the cutting edge.

What's the best evidence that short fiction is becoming more popular?

That is a hard question to answer well. It's so difficult to see trends while you're in them, if you will. The fact that Zoetrope has done well is one bit of evidence. The fact that there have been some collections that have become best sellers would be another.

There's been a suggestion that short fiction is actually becoming hip.

Well I always thought it was, so I'm probably the one who's out of date! I think Zoetrope has helped people to be less intimidated by short fiction. For the most part it could seem daunting -- or just very staid or academic or high art. Just kind of heavy in that way. But everything from our format to the presentation to the types of reading series we do makes it more accessible. We have actors reading stories. We put an emphasis on having fun and enjoying it and it being part of this wonderful world of entertainment.

You did a reading with Marisa Tomei, right?

That was a special event because it was our third anniversary. But we have a reading series in New York. It's on and off again in Boston. It's in Palo Alto and in San Francisco, at Francis's restaurant. It's a series called Zoetrope Live Story, where actors come in and read stories. It's just a tremendous amount of fun. It's not that writers don't read their stories wonderfully, but there's a whole new twist when someone really dramatizes the story.

Is there any particular marketing objective to an event of that kind?

We have such a small staff. For the most part, for the first couple of years -- or the first year -- it was just me. We have a staff of four now, but we actually don't think in terms of those kinds of things. I've never had what I would call a "marketing meeting." But I'm sure that all the things we do contribute to this larger brand identity and what Zoetrope is. Zoetrope is about the pleasure of stories.

There's also a play that's been produced, or is being produced, out on the West Coast?

Yes, we had a one act play issue about a year-and-a-half ago, and Urban Empire, which is a production company, approached us to compile our one act issue into a group that was titled Worldly Acts. They were first produced in New York at this wonderful off-Broadway Theatre and they got great reviews; we were in The Times. And now they've taken Worldly Acts to the West Coast and it's at the Tiffany Theatre in Los Angeles.

How many uses are there for the material that Zoetrope publishes? Could they evolve into TV shows, even TV commercials?

I've never thought about commercials. But the idea from the beginning, when Francis and I were conceiving of the magazine, was that stories can be just what they are -- magnificent little gems. We've won a lot of prizes just on the basis of our literary stories, just on the basis of just what they are as stories. But the idea behind the magazine is that these stories can go on to become many different things. They can go on to become plays, they can go on to become television, they can go on to become movies, and to that end we do option the stories that we buy.

Could there be a Zoetrope retail environment? Like a restaurant or a club?

That isn't something that as the editor-in-chief of the magazine that I've thought a lot about it, but I'm sure that Francis has. Two of our readings series take place in his restaurants out in California. But, yeah, I think he could imagine having All Story Cafes around the country or something like that. I'm sure those things float through his head all the time.

Zoetrope would be a wonderful environment for a lot of brands and yet there's almost no advertising in it.

Francis never wanted a whole lot of ad pages. It wasn't supposed to be an advertisement-driven magazine. We've never had more than five or six pages of ads in it; we've never really wanted more than that.

But we do develop relationships with our advertisers. For instance, we had Sam Adams as an advertiser for a long time. They sponsored our readings and sent someone on our scholarship to our writers retreats -- that type of thing. We get more involved in kind of a larger way when we have the right company. It's s a less traditional advertising system than most.

Does it matter whether the magazine makes money?

I don't imagine Zoetrope -- on its own -- will ever make money. Some of these related endeavors, like a film, would make money and then that would go back into the magazine. It does a lot better than most others in the category just because we're on newsprint, we have a bigger circulation, it costs less to subscribe. It's a funny question. It’s just not really one that I spend a lot of time thinking about.

Does the Web site add any particular dimension?

The Web site has many different activities on it. In particular, there's a writers' workshop that is a very exciting environment for young writers to be in. They critique each other's work and then they submit their work to us. They really give each other great feedback. You can subscribe to the magazine and read the magazine online. The business of the magazine is on there. The Web site just keeps things lively.

Why do you think you won the National Magazine Award?

I think the things that separate out Zoetrope are that we have stories that have great voices, that have real narrative arc. They're what I would call a classic story -- you really go somewhere in a Zoetrope story. We don't have sort of small, experimental, little slice of life, thoughts-on-the-potato type of stories. That's just not our thing -- which isn't to say there aren't great stories that are written in that field. We obviously struck some chord. We had a great year and we put together some good submissions for them.

How many of your writers are big names versus unknowns?

We probably have one bigger name in each issue. But for the most part the joy of Zoetrope is discovering an unknown writer. One of the really thrilling things that literary magazines do is launch people's careers. Like Melissa Bank -- she really hadn't had much in the way of any stories published before, but when she was published in Zoetrope with The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, it was just within days that she had an agent. Within a few more days she had this tremendous book deal and all that.

Has the mix changed over the last five years?

I don't think so particularly. We focus much more on the story than the name of the writer and, oddly, it's a lot easier to find a mediocre story by a really well known writer than it is to find a great story by an unknown writer. So we really focus on the story.

This sounds like fun.

It is fun.

What makes it fun?

If you love what you do, that's what makes it fun. Starting anything from scratch is a tremendous amount of work, but it's also thrilling. Zoetrope tickles every part of my brain because there's the business aspect, and the circulation and the distribution and the advertising, and there’s the editorial and working with writers, which is everybody’s favorite part. Coming up with ideas for stories and commissioning fiction and coming up with ideas for essay topics. But this is what I love to do so it's a lot of fun.

Where do you see it all heading over the next several years?

Well, for one it's heading out West!

But you're staying behind.

I am. I think it's going to change and change is a very good thing for a magazine. I know that sounds vague, but Zoetrope has had such success as such a young magazine. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we do things differently and in a strange way, perhaps because I wasn't part of the publishing institutions…the New York publishing world -- which is very cliquey and insider and all that.

In a strange way, being able to run a magazine like this, where I actually didn't have to pay attention to the buzz of which writer was hot today, but actually just focusing on the stories and what was wonderful about them. That spirit -- which is very much of Francis’ philosophy -- will always be alive in Zoetrope. That's actually a really huge freedom that helps the magazine be unique.

So why is it moving out West?

Mostly because Francis wanted it to. Essentially, I think he wanted to get all of his different creative empires, if you will -- he has a film company a television company, a magazine, a wonderful Internet site, and he's got these restaurants -- I think he just wanted it all under one roof so there could be more synergy. So I think that's the basic idea.

What’s it like working with Francis?

I love it. It's been great. He is brilliant and he's got tons of ideas. He's very passionate. He also gives a tremendous amount of freedom. He is not a micro-manager. He's clear about what he wants and what he cares about. He trusts the people who run his companies and who work with him and he gives a lot of freedom -- both to the writers and to the editorial staff.

It's a really great situation. As with anyone, it takes two personalities that work well together and I think we just happen to work well together and get along well. I'm sure not everyone would find it easy, but I really enjoy working with him and how his mind works.