Author Bernard F. Conners on His Novel Dancehall
By Juliet Barney
A renaissance man if ever there was one, Bernard F. Conners has achieved success on numerous levels—as a novelist, film producer, entrepreneur, athlete, FBI agent and former lieutenant in the US Army. As a teen, he prominently mastered athleticism throughout his high school and college years, which led to an offer to play for the Chicago Bears.
His multi-varied career has led him through a period in the military, where he achieved the rank of Lieutenant in the United States Army, earning personal commendations from the commander of the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Conners later worked as an FBI Agent in charge of the night divisions in New York and Chicago, where he received personal citations from J. Edgar Hoover.
After leaving the field of law enforcement, Conners began to pursue his love for writing. He became publisher of The Paris Review and has written several novels, including Tailspin, The Hampton Sisters and Don’t Embarrass the Bureau. He eventually became owner of the British American firm, which covers a wide range of functions including real estate development, film and television production (his production credits include the films Nuremburg-Infamy on Trial, Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way and Our Mother’s Murder), book publishing, and the manufacture and sale of soft drinks.
Currently residing in Loudonville and Lake Placid, Conners is an active member in his communities and served on the Olympic Regional Development Authority in Lake Placid, among many others.
Conners was drawn to writing the novel Dancehall
Bernard Conners recently shared his experience in writing the novel, which is currently being made into a feature film, with shooting locations in Lake Placid, Elizabethtown, Loudonville, Lake George and Albany.
The Free George: How did the idea for Dancehall come about?
Bernard Conners: In the beginning of Ortloff’s book, he makes a comment that because of the success of Dancehall, which hit the best sellers list, he thought people would like to know the non-fiction aspect of what really happened. So his book came out sometime after mine, but his is what actually happened to Mabel Douglass, but mine is pure fiction. There was a lot of local lore of Ms. Douglass’ body surfacing and I thought it would be a good novel. I heard a lot of rumors about it and that’s what inspired me. I though it was kind of a mysterious story and thought it would make a good novel.
TFG: What aspects did you actually change from the true account of the lady in the lake story?
BC: Beyond the fact that there was a woman who disappeared at Pulpit Rock, mine is total fiction. There is nothing in it that is probably based on fact. It is all basically a figment of my imagination.
TFG: Some authors base their characters on people they know; did you utilize that technique?
BC: The one that comes to mind was the Warden at the Sing Sing Prison. It was based kind of on his persona. The warden’s name was Richard Wallace and he was really a charming man, a really lovely man. I interviewed him considerably in determining just how the executions were carried out at Sing Sing. He was involved in a couple of executions there, and he was very helpful in describing the act of the procedure.
TFG: I have a couple of questions about the setting of Dancehall. The restaurant where the characters of Ann & Dave worked, was it based on the Lake Placid Club or the Whiteface Inn?
BC: Everything was pretty much based on the old club of Lake Placid. I used to be the lifeguard at the Lake Placid Club, so I used that as kind of a basis for my descriptions of different things.
TFG: Was the actual Dancehall based on a real location?
BC: There used to be a place there, I don’t remember what the name of it was, but it was a wonderful place where people danced and there was a bar. It was pretty much the way I described it in the book. It was a wonderful place. It had a very nice dining area, and it had a bar where everybody used to hang out and dance. It had a lot of rock music or whatever else was playing in the eighties. The perfect name for the place would have been Dancehall.
TFG: And how much did your knowledge of Lake Placid influence your writing?
BC: Since I had a summer place in Lake Placid for many years, my actual experience was very helpful in describing scenery, and different elements of the book. I drew on my experiences as a lifeguard in Lake Placid and having lived there for many years enabled me to write various things about the scenery and locale.
TFG: How much research did you have to do to secure the details of your novel, for example the setting or character psychology?
BC: I think there was a psychiatrist, Anthony J. DeTommasi, he was a Professor of Psychiatry at Albany Medical College, he was very helpful in explaining the different characteristics of the malady that Sue Powell experienced in the novel. I knew nothing about that particular disease. The people in the front of the book are all people to whom I talked a great deal about different aspects of the novel, the legal aspects, the criminal aspects, the execution itself, all of those things.
TFG: I always wonder when reading novels if the author knows how they are going to end the novel before they start writing, did you pre-plan the ending? Or did the ending develop as you were writing?
BC: It varies with authors. I think people who are new at the writing game oftentimes just let the characters take over. They don’t really know for sure where they are going. More experienced writers tried to avoid that. I was publisher of the Paris Review which is a literary magazine. George Plimpton was the editor and he and I started what we called the Paris Review Edition, which were books that had literary merit. An author once told me: “My characters are galley slaves, they do exactly what I want them to do.” It may be an advantage that they just let their characters take over and they just kind of write extemporaneously.
As for myself, now, I want to have a pretty good idea of where my characters are going and how the book is going to end up. Particularly with The Hampton Sisters, which was a fairly complex novel. It was very important to have a good deal of discipline when writing it. Experienced writers generally know where they are going in the book.
TFG: The hot topic in Lake Placid is the filming of Dancehall. How involved are you with the film production?
BC: I’m not really involved. They’re purchasing the rights to use the novel in this film. My involvement is very limited for the reason that I produced three films, and have been very much involved in a fourth film. On three of them I was executive producer. The last film, Nuremberg-Infamy on Trial, was a pretty big film with Alec Baldwin, Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow, big stars. Actually it won Emmy’s and was on television several nights and it got great awards as a result. They were done through studios. This Dancehall that they are telling is an independent film, and I found that authors invariably are unhappy with the adaptation of their work into film. My own experience is when authors get involved, it really is disruptive, and so, I’ve tried to just keep my distance between that movie and myself. For example, I think it was Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, Spencer Tracy played the lead in the film version, and I think Hemingway was distressed. That is just an off the cuff example.
To read our review of Dancehall, click here.
To purchase a copy of the novel, click here.
And to read more about the film version that’s currently underway, click here.
–Juliet Barney is an Assistant Editor of The Free George.
Short URL: http://thefreegeorge.com/thefreegeorge/?p=3764
