Ann Seidl, writer and director of The Hollywood Librarian
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!
Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 12/27/2006
Make sure to have your gowns and tuxes ready for the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Washington, DC, this June. You won't want to miss the red carpet, black-tie premiere of The Hollywood Librarian, the first documentary ever about—you guessed it—librarians.
SLJ caught up with writer and director Ann Seidl (her production company is called Overdue Productions) to talk about this long-awaited labor of love, why she made it, and what "stars" are in it.
What's The Hollywood Librarian about?
My documentary is the first real look at the lives and work of all kinds of librarians in the United States—school librarians, academic librarians, children's librarians, public librarians.
There's lots of humor, lots of poking fun at the stereotypes, and that will dispel the myth of the repressive, humorless librarian.
Is dispelling the myth the whole point of the film?
That's why I wanted to show the real life and real work of librarians. It started out in order to dispel the myth, but really I learned that people have no idea who we are and what we do. It deals with more serious themes of what censorship is and what it means to burn a book. We also deal with the ins and outs of the Patriot Act and intellectual freedom.
Why would this movie appeal to the average person?
I think everybody in the United States—or certainly a majority of people—have a story about a library or a librarian. People don't realize that they're interested in librarians, and that's where I came up with the hook—the Hollywood aspect of The Hollywood Librarian. That's where I've used film clips from Hollywood motion pictures that feature librarians to show that we're everywhere in the movies, but we're even more ubiquitous in life.
How did you get interested in the subject?
When I was in library school, I saw Party Girl—it's the most recent and most comprehensive look at librarianship on film. I also saw the The Celluloid Closet, which is a documentary of gay and lesbian people in the movies, and those came together for me. I said, "I wonder if anyone's ever looked at librarians on film." The Hollywood Librarian is the blending of film clips and real footage of librarians, and getting to know these people and the story lines.
What famous librarians can we expect to see in your film?
Nancy Pearl is one of them. We interviewed Ray Bradbury about his use of libraries. He wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of the UCLA library.
We also interviewed Peg Hepburn Perry, the sister of Katharine Hepburn, who played a librarian in Desk Set, which is what I call part of the holy trinity of librarian pictures. Hepburn plays a poised, fashionable, humorous, and excellent librarian. There's nothing wrong with the way she portrays librarianship in that movie. Peg was a librarian. She put together the school library in her small town of Canton, CT, in the '40s, and she got the Collinsville Public Library up and running. We interviewed her in September and she passed away in February.
