Film Festivals and Screenings

The film premiered at The Rhode Island International Film Festival, where it received 1st prize in the Providence Film Festival category. It was the opening night film at The Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, was also screened at The Black Earth Film Festival at The Carl Sandburg House in Gaylesbug, IL. The film was an official selection at The New England Film Festival.

The film has been screened at The University of North Carolina-Wilmington’s Writer’s Week 2008, at Emerson College, The University of Massachusetts-Boston, Tufts University and other colleges and schools.

The film is now available

After a variety of showings at colleges and universities, the film is for sale. The DVD is priced at $30, and is available at Amazon.com’s Createspace.

The film is something I hope will be of interest primarily to writers, aspiring writers and those who appreciate good writing.

The film includes writers, editors, and friends who provide insight into Dubus’s meticulous work ethic and brilliant prose. The film follows Dubus from his childhood in Louisiana to his adult life in Massachusetts, and to the life-altering night on a dark highway that left him in a wheelchair the rest of his life.

Making “The Times Were Never So Bad: The Life of Andre Dubus”

In 2006 I began work on the film “The Times Were Never So Bad: The Life of Andre Dubus,” an 86-minute documentary that chronicles the life of the great short story writer Andre Dubus (1936-1999).

I interviewed dozens of people in Dubus’s hometown of Haverhill, Mass., and beyond; in the late fall of that year I departed on a 9,500-mile circuit around the country that took me to Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming and California, speaking to writers who knew Dubus, to friends and former students, and family. It was a wonderful trip.

It is, I think, a “talking” project, one in which the insights of authors such as Tobias Wolff, Richard Russo, James Lee Burke and Andre Dubus III illuminate Dubus’s writing. His family members helped underline how closely Dubus’s life and work were intertwined.

The project was completed in 2007, screened at film festivals in 2008, and in 2009 is available for purchase. Thanks to all who participated!