Frank Stanford and the Movies With James McWilliams

8 min readAug 1, 2024

Frank Stanford filming — Frank Stanford Filming Photo from Beinecke Library (YCAL MSS 1086 Box 12 Pictures 1975–1977)

Whenever I share Frank Stanford’s work at least one student becomes electrified with inspiration. Most students ask why a Stanford documentary does not exist, or a movie inspired by his life. Film students I taught in Southern California said they would make the movie. No one has done that so far; though once I had a student who shared her homemade film on the last day of class. Her film showed landscapes and drawings in sync with her recitation of Stanford’s poem “Wearinness of Men.” That was fun to watch with her peers in class; they were shocked, in a good way, by her cinematic creation.

I communicated with the filmmaker Brett Morgen in 2015 and asked about his interest in making a Frank Stanford documentary. In his words, “there simply [was] not an archival hook, footage, something that a film could be based on other than interviews.” He kindheartedly said no. The obvious first step, he made me think, was to write Frank Stanford’s biography. That’s been done.

James McWilliams finished the biography — keep a lookout for it. The first Frank Stanford biography will be published by the University of Arkansas Press next year.

McWilliams answered more questions I asked. They were about Stanford’s life related to movies. McWilliams again shared fascinating pieces of information about the poet.

Seven questions are below.

Clyde Miller’s Sunset Drive-In theater plays a major role in Stanford’s epic poem The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You (The Battlefield). A lot of action takes place at the drive-in, where we learn so much about the characters in the poem. Clyde Miller is a racist. Francis and his crew, driving a stolen bulldozer, demolish the movie screen while Hallelujah plays on it. Also during the bulldozer scene, we learn about his pal Tang. It’s one of the most heart-wrenching stories in The Battlefield. I remember Father Fuhrmann, one of Frank’s mentors, telling me about Frank going to the movies. In your research, what did you learn about movie theaters in Frank’s life?

Frank loved the movies. When he was in New York for a month in August-September 1972, he saw over 100 movies. When he went to the famous Hollins literary conference in 1970, he saw about fifty movies in two weeks. Frank had his own theater in Eureka Springs in the Spring of 1973 and showed a lot of new wave cinema films. When he was at the University of Arkansas in 1969 he was in charge of the Student Union film series and, before that, Frank and his friend Bill Willett took dates to the drive-in theaters in Fayetteville and Mountain Home.

Frank loved living in rural and remote areas, but the one drawback for him was always the distance he had to travel to see serious films. And of course, with Irv Broughton, Frank made his own film, It Wasn’t A Dream: It Was a Flood, which is available on YouTube.

I remember finding a paper, while looking through boxes at the Beinecke Library, about Iranian Film Night at the Student Union at Univ. of Arkansas. How did Frank learn so much about foreign films, and do you think that relates to his interest in foreign literature and translation?

I think Frank’s fascination with foreign films began at Arkansas, when he began to see serious foreign films at both the Union and the UArk Theater, above which he lived for a while in 1967. His interest in “translationese” began around the same time, as was surely influenced by his love of Cocteau, Truffaud, Pasolini, and Bertolucci.

It’s no coincidence that, with the exception of Truffaud, these filmmakers began as poets. You could say Frank’s ideal artist was the poet-filmmaker. In terms of his film knowledge, Frank landed in a hive of culturally sophisticated poets at Arkansas. People such as Leon Stokesbury, John Butler, John Wood, Ralph Adamo, and Sam Gwynne certainly opened Frank’s eyes to foreign film and poetry in way that, while he might not have been quick to admit it, was formative.

Did you learn more about actors or actresses who Frank admired? I ask because there are so many of them mentioned in The Battlefield, from Charlie Chaplin to Lauren Bacall to Marlon Brando.

Frank was deeply attracted to performative personalities, whether they were actors or not. Yes, there was Chaplin, Bacall, Brando, but there was also Muhammad Ali, Yukio Mishima (an actor and writer), the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, Elvis Presley (an actor and musician), and Sonny Liston. In a more subtle way, you could say that Frank’s admiration for the Black friends in his life — namely Charlie B. Lemon, Jimbo Reynolds, and Richard Banks — was an admiration based on these characters performative use of language, an admiration that comes through repeatedly in The Battlefield. In the scene at Clyde Miller’s, recall that Tang and Charlie B are dying to see the film Hallelujah because they (or in Tang’s case his late wife) are in it as extras.

Frank Stanford with Jimbo Reynolds — Frank Stanford and a Regular at Sherman’s Bar Photo from Beinecke Library (YCAL MSS 1086 Box 12 Pictures 1975–1977)

Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield and It Wasn’t a Dream: It Was a Flood, the twenty-five minute documentary he made with Irv Broughton that you mentioned earlier, are crucial findings for the person who studies Frank Stanford and his writings. Will you share what you have learned about the movie Frank and Irv made?

I spend a great deal of time looking into the making of It Wasn’t a Dream: It Was a Flood in my forthcoming book, but I’ll mention some highlights.

Frank and Irv made the film with a very tight budget.

Frank did most of the shooting with Irv’s Bell and Howell camera, which did not sync with a recording device, so the sound had to be dubbed in. The opening scene of a howling Richard Banks took place one night in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and was fueled with an amazing amount of alcohol.

Frank chose the music and choreographed the movie’s most intense scene — a monk rowing a small coffin in a canoe to the shore of Lake Dardanelle. During the filming Father Nick [Fuhrmann] thought Frank was going to drown.

Frank Stanford filming monk in a canoe — Frank Stanford Filming It Wasn’t A Dream: It Was A Flood Photo from Beinecke Library (YCAL MSS 1086 Box 12 Pictures 1975–1977)

Irv did a lot of directing by way of writing letters to Frank about what to shoot, and while the two worked well together, tensions emerged when Frank somehow broke Irv’s camera. Ginny, Frank’s wife, did most of the still photos for the film, and a lot of B roll was taken by Frank. Irv cut and edited the film, which won an award at a film festival in Seattle in 1975.

Do you think Frank could have become interested in making movies if he lived past thirty?

I think Frank would have been much better off making films than running Lost Roads, which he started to do in 1975–76. He was urged by his friend Jim Babij, a UCLA film student, to come to Los Angeles and work with him in 1973–4. Ellen Gilchrist had a film school professor friend in Baltimore she wanted to hook Frank up with — others clearly saw Frank’s talent and passion for film. Why Frank never followed up on these opportunities is a complex question.

For one he was worried that to make films for a living he’d have to sell out as an artist, and that was something he could never do. He also was deeply tied to Arkansas and, after 1975, to C.D. Wright, who was his lover, an MFA student, and a poet with whom he was in love. When they started to run Lost Roads together, this tied him even more to both C.D. and Fayetteville. He tried to make films after It Wasn’t a Dream: It Was a Flood — one example being a film on his levee camp days that centered on the people who worked to build the levees. The problem was always a lack of time and resources.

But, to return to the spirit of your question, yes, I do think he might have turned to film in a more concerted way had circumstances been a little different and resources been more available. And, I think he would have made amazing films.

Frank’s second marriage was with the gifted painter Ginny Stanford. As someone who is a visual artist, how did she influence Frank’s life when it came to imagery and film?

The two artists worked very closely together — symbiotically and amicably. Frank would suggest images for Ginny to draw and paint and, without resistance, she always did it. The medium uniting the couple more than any other was photography. Ginny was also an exceptionally talented photographer. She took many hundreds of photos of Frank and painted many dozens of paintings based on those photos. If the couple had had access to a smart phone it’s terrifying to think how many selfies they would have taken.

Ginny Stanford Painting of Frank Stanford for Cover of Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives (Third Man Books 2015)

What did you learn about movies and poetry when you wrote the biography?

I learned that there are hundreds of movies imbued with the spirit of poetry that I need to see. Frank’s love and knowledge of film led to me to take out a subscription to Criterion, which initiated my own education in foreign titles. Right now, I’m obsessed with The 400 Blows by Truffaud. I mean: obsessed.

Reading The Battlefield reveals how much the visual arts influenced Stanford’s poetry. The text provides a remarkable list of actors, actresses, and movie titles. In the last few years of his life, Stanford made his autobiographical film, It Wasn’t A Dream: It Was A Flood. When it comes to a poet like Frank Stanford who liked movies and even made one, poetry and film become inseparable. Both art forms use sound, rhythm, and imagery to rouse our minds and hearts. Like poetry, when we watch movies many feelings emerge from inside us. Sometimes we may not understand our initial reaction to a movie, and the same thing can happen when we read a poem. This certainly holds true for The Battlefield, a poem that uses cinematic imagery to explore the liminal world of growing up in the American South.

Frank Stanford and the Movies With James McWilliams

Written by Ata Moharreri