Vincent Minnelli Roaming Around in the Woods

Don't forget to come to the big event a week from today: Dean Faulkner Wells presenting her new memoir EVERY DAY BY THE SUN. We "writers" were over at her house rehearsing our parts last night... she told me that George Peppard and Eleanor Parker had come over (to the same house) while filming HOME FROM THE HILL in Oxford, that the film's director Vincent Minnelli was so obsessed with "Pappy" (as Dean calls William Faulkner) that he constantly roamed around the woods near Rowan Oak hoping to run into him (not knowing Faulkner was in Virginia at the time) - the same woods I saw Tom Waits coming out of that time! That's the kind of experience Vincent Minnelli was hoping for, I guess. Dean also told me that she's IN the movie! So that's neat. We heard some wonderful passages from the memoir, including the time she saw "Pappy" climb fully clothed into Bennet Cerf's bathtub to listen to the radio and all about the short, raggedy pants (described in hilarious detail) he wore to her engagement party. All that's just for starters. You have to come to the event to hear the rest. (I found myself calling Faulkner "Mr. Faulkner" in our conversation... I mean, what do you say? I couldn't make myself say "Pappy," and plain old "Faulkner" didn't seem polite either.) Pictured, Robert Mitchum looking very patriarchal in HOME FROM THE HILL.