Back to Featured Interviews >>

MEET DEAN PITCHFORD
by Bonnie O'Brian

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

Dean Pitchford

When I was about 10, I overheard my mother enthusiastically discussing “To Kill A Mockingbird,” so I took her copy and started to read it; I had never been so swept up into a narrative. But then at school – sixth grade in a Catholic school in Honolulu in the late 50’s – a nun saw me reading the book and confiscated it. I didn’t dare tell my mother I had “lost” her book, especially since the nun had made me feel that reading it was something sinful. So I scrimped together my allowance, broke into my piggy bank, bought a new copy of the book and – after finishing it – put it back on my mother’s shelf. The entire episode suffused the book – and the very act of reading – with a whiff of danger and intrigue.

Did you write stories when you were growing up? at school? Or at home as a hobby? As a young child, or as a teenager, or both?

I wrote poetry all through high school, and, when I applied to college, the recruitingg officer from Yale encouraged me to send some of my poetry to the admissions committee. Later I was informed that the poetry had played a big part in Yale’s decision to accept me, so I kept writing throughout college and even after I graduated. It wasn’t until I had lived in New York for three or four years that I was encouraged to turn my poetry-writing skill into lyric-writing, which, though a different discipline, felt like a good fit. The songs I have written since have sold over seventy million copies around the world, so I guess the decision was a good one.

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

I got my first job as a writer while I was still a junior in college. Through a friend, I was put in touch with a team of writers (a married couple) living in New York City who had written the original edition of “ Hawaii on $5 & $10 A Day,” part of that hugely successful franchise. They hadn’t been back to the Islands to update the book since having a baby, and they needed someone young and energetic to canvas the four major islands – Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii – and to report on new restaurants and hotels, etc. I returned home for the summer to Honolulu and was beginning work on that book when I got a call from the writers saying that their publisher had asked them to write yet another travel guide to Hawaii… something for a mid-budget readership. So I spent my summer researching, writing and sending off reams of pages every other day, creating enough material to fill both books. By the end of the summer I could tell you where you could find the cheapest rooms, meals and tours in the State of Hawaii… a talent which didn’t interest many people once I got back to Yale.

Do you do other types of writing - for example, educational, non-fiction, magazine work?

As I’ve mentioned above, I went from travel-writing and poetry-writingto lyric writing. After several years of creating pop music, though, I itched to create a larger setting for my songs, so I started to write my first screenplay. I didn’t know much about writing for the screen, so I spent my mornings in Los Angeles at the Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, reading the screenplays of movies with which I was familiar. After lunch, I’d rush home and try to plug what I’d learned into my work. The screenplay that resulted was first called “Cheek to Cheek,” but after years of re-writes, changes of personnel and being moved around from one studio to another, I re-titled the script “Footloose;” it was made and released by Paramount in 1984 and became the largest grossing February release in the history of motion pictures (up to that time.)

 What gave you the idea for THE BIG ONE-OH?

 Two things:

1. After I saw – and enjoyed – the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” I became fascinated with trying to figure out what other occasions in our lives bring us all together as enthusiastically as a wedding does. I realized that, as adults, we tend to dismiss our birthdays (“Please, don’t get me anything! Don’t even remind me!”), but as kids – until we get jaded – a birthday can be a monumental, HUMONGOUS event! So I began playing with an idea about a disastrous birthday party.

 2.My only sister – ten years my junior -- was among the victims of the World Trade Center attack, and she left behind a husband, a daughter (9) and a son (3). I had always been close to my niece, but after 9/11 I was desperate to find more ways to strengthen my bond with her. So I wrote THE BIG ONE-OH and sent the first draft to Colby (by then, a very smart 12-year-old) and asked for her input; she was amazing! I plugged in many of her suggestions before submitting the manuscript to my agent, who suggested a few trims herself and then sold the book in three weeks.

Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?

 It wasn’t until I was on a panel addressing a class of film students that one of them pointed out to me how the story of my “Footloose” script -- a boy from a big city moves to a small, stifling town – paralleled the story of my own life. (Halfway through my high-school career in Honolulu, I had moved to Kansas City, MO -- which felt as familiar to me as the surface of the moon!)

When I was writing THE BIG ONE-OH, I was much more conscious about drawing from the specifics of my own life. My father – like the father of my protagonist Charley Maplewood – left when I was young. He was a photographer and had left behind a darkroom in our house in Honolulu, so, for a few years after his departure, I continued to take pictures, develop film and make prints, just as I had seen my dad do while I was growing up. In a similar vein: Charley’s dad is a chef, and now that he’s gone, Charley – despite the fact that he’s nine years-old at the beginning of the book – shops and cooks extravagant gourmet meals that confuse his mother and disgust his sneering teenage sister. I also write about several other kids’ birthday parties in the book, most of which owe a debt to disastrous parties I attended – or threw – as a child.

 Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

 When I’m in the thick of a project, I try to keep office hours (despite the fact that my office is in my home.) I try to be at my desk by 10 a.m. and to work – without interruption – until 1 p.m. Then I’ll break for lunch. If I’m on a roll, I’ll go back to writing, but usually the afternoon is spent attending to the details of other projects and managing a catalogue of several hundred pop songs.

When is your next book going to be in book stores?

 THE BIG ONE-OH is being released by Putnam on March 1, 2007. Thanks for asking.