Ernest J. Gaines: You try to not answer things but to perk the interest or the intellect of the reader and let him ask questions. It’s a catch-22.
Scarlett Johansson: It’s so nice to come home and have this fluffy, warm thing purring and rubbing your leg. Samuel L. Jackson got eaten whole.
Gaines: Danny Glover plays a social worker who visits prisons.
Johansson: All I could think was, “I’m being interviewed by David Letterman.”
Gaines: I’ve sold the rights to HBO.
•••
Johansson: We got the last seats. [Laughs] Thank God.
Gaines: I don’t lecture. If it sounds good, then it is. It’s all concentrated.
Johansson: It’s totally out of control.
Gaines: That helped me get through 1959.
Johansson: We did this weird virtual reality ride where you become a raindrop in a thunderstorm in the city.
•••
Gaines: Yes, we cut out some sexual terms and then added illustrations to make it a children’s book.
Johansson: It makes me cry every time. That’s not really a pleasure.
Gaines: I’m not interested in seeing one side of anything.
Johansson: It was in this part of L.A. that’s totally overrun by wild parakeets.
Gaines: I learn about their ways of thinking and describing things, their backgrounds and social lives. There is very little action.