Interview
SLIFF 2019 Interview: Harper Barnes – His Career Inspired the 1977 Film BETWEEN THE LINES
BETWEEN THE LINES (1977) will be screening at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave) on Thursday, Nov 14 at 7:30pm as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Harper Barnes, former film critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. This is a FREE event.
In BETWEEN THE LINES at the offices of a Boston alternative newspaper, the staff members enjoy a positive and open-minded work environment. Music critic Max (Jeff Goldblum) uses his influence to score dates, while news reporter Harry (John Heard) is involved with the lovely Abbie (Lindsay Crouse), the publication’s lead photographer. However, it seems as though their relatively carefree days are numbered when the owner of a major publishing company buys the paper, leading to more money but even more changes. The film’s astonishingly deep cast also includes Bruno Kirby, Gwen Welles, Jill Eikenberry, Joe Morton, Marilu Henner, Michael J. Pollard, Raymond J. Barry, and Stephen Collins. “Between the Lines” — directed by pioneering woman independent filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street,” “Head Over Heels”) and recently restored by Cohen Film Media — was loosely inspired by events involving longtime St. Louis film critic Harper Barnes during his early-’70s tenure as editor of the Cambridge (later Boston) Phoenix. Barnes will be on hand to introduce the restoration and lead a post-film discussion that separates fact from the film’s fiction. (For another take on the tale, see Fred Goodman’s book “Mansion on the Hill.”)
Harper Barnes took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about BETWEEN THE LINES and his early career in underground journalism.
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman October 31st, 2019
Tom Stockman: Let’s talk about this film that was made in 1977, BETWEEN THE LINES, that will be showing November 15th as part of SLIFF. I understand the film was based, in part, on some of your experiences.
Harper Barnes: My experiences are tangential to the film. One of the basic plot points of BETWEEN THE LINES was that a reporter played by John Heard is fired. I was the editor of The Boston Phoenix, one of the two alternative papers in Boston in those days. When I was fired, the whole staff walked out We had a month-long strike It is not quite duplicated in the movie, but you can tell that part of the story came from my firing. It was the front page news in The Boston Globe at the time. They had this photograph of me, a side shot, and they would post it and the headline would just say “Fired!“ then about five days later, I would get hired again, then fired again, and the Globe would re-post the picture. Sometimes they would flop it! it was quite an adventure and the tone of that was well-reflected in BETWEEN THE LINES.
TS: Did someone contact you in 1977 about the possibility of you being involved in this film? It was written by Fred Barron from the story by David Helpern.
HB: No, I didn’t know anything about the movie until it came out I had heard rumors of it, but I did not know those writers before that. They came through town on a tour of the movie and talked to me. You really couldn’t talk about the underground papers in Boston in those days without talking to me. I was the editor of the principal paper then. My firing lead to the formation of a union. There were lawsuits and it dragged on for about five years.
TS: So the movie came out in 1977, had you moved to St. Louis by then?
HB: Yes I had. You should read my review of the film.
TS: Tell me about Fred Goodman’s book Mansion on the Hill.
HB: That book is about Boston in the 60s and 70s. It was written after the movie BETWEEN THE LINES came out. It’s really about the difference between Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, but the book has a lot to do with the clash of the underground and what Kennedy called “hip capitalists“, And that’s what happens in the movie BETWEEN THE LINES, a capitalist buys The Back Bay Mainline, which is what the paper is called in the movie. There’s quite a bit about me and the whole strike in that book. It came to symbolize the battle for the minds of young people between left wing political purity and these ‘hip capitalists’. The movie treated the subject lightly. It’s a funny movie
TS: I recall one of the very first movies I ever saw on HBO was BETWEEN THE LINES, probably around 1980 but my recollection of the film is vague. I didn’t want to watch it again until I had the opportunity to see it at this year‘s SLIFF.
HB: I haven’t seen the film again since it was a new either.
TS: Where did you see the film for the first time?
HB: I don’t recall the exact theater but it did get distributed and played theatrically here in St. Louis when it was new. They had sent screenwriter Fred Barron on a tour.
TS: Did you review movies for The Boston Phoenix?
HB: No, I was the editor. The movie reviewing thing was something of a fallback position. I had always loved the movies ever since I took a year-long course in movie history at the University of Kansas so movies was really more of a hobby for me. I hated being an editor. I wanted to express my own ideas.
TS: Do you think Joan Macklin Silver, director of BETWEEN THE LINES, and writers Fred Barron and David Helpern captured the mood and setting of working at a counterculture newspaper in the 70s well?
HB: I’d say they captured half of it. The tone is fairly light. The principal character I think is the one played by Jeff Goldblum. He is the music critic for the paper. He’s in it for the bucks. Like rock critics really did, he gets review copies of records and then he sells them. The record companies would put holes in the corners of the album covers, so they couldn’t be sold as new. He tells the record company that if they don’t send him a pristine copy he can sell for a full price, he’s going to stop reviewing them. I did that as well. The last year I worked in Boston, I work for a communal paper called The Real Paper, which was formed after the last time I got fired. I would go to the post office once a week, and there would be a stack of records that I would truck down to the record store and sell them. I made more money that way than I did with my salary.
TS: How did you end up in St. Louis?
HB: When I got out of college, graduate school at KU, I sort of stumbled into a job at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. My friend Bill Woo was my college roommate. He was sort of the rising star at the paper at the time and he eventually became the editor. So I went to work for him. I was for Feature Director at the Post for a while, and I edited the Sunday magazine I did a lot of jobs for the Post during my 35 years there.
TS: So what are you going to talk about when BETWEEN THE LINES screens at SLIFF on November 15?
HB: I’m going to read part of my original review of the film, and then if people are interested, I’m going to talk about how well the movie reflects what the real situation was. BETWEEN THE LINES mostly got good reviews from critics when it came out, but the critics from Boston didn’t like it because they thought the film didn’t take them seriously enough. The strike was a bitter strike and I was sort of battered by it, so by then I was ready to take a funny look at the whole thing. One thing the movie did to lighten things up was to put a pinball machine in the main office. That was going a bit too far. But the movie has a great cast. It’s got Jeff Goldblum and John Heard and Lindsay Crouse.
TS: I can remember a scene with Michael J Pollard selling the papers in the street.
HB: Yes, those guys were called Hawkers We had a whole network of mostly kids who sold the paper on street corners
TS: I looking forward to watching BETWEEN THE LINES with you on November 15th as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival.
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