Pop Geeks’ Flashback Interview: Michelle Maren
This interview is another example of a talent reaching out to me for an interview as opposed to the other way around. A few months ago, I liked the Official Michelle Maren page on Facebook. She struck me as a rather intriguing personality. Shortly after I liked her page, she reached out to the Pop Geeks Facebook page and asked about doing an interview with me. This was back in July. On November 2nd, to celebrate the release of her documentary An Autobiography Of Michelle Maren, I did an interview with her. I found her to be charming and sweet in discussing the aspects of her life, both good and bad. I hope you all enjoy getting to know her as well.
Let’s Flashback again. Say hello to Michelle Maren!
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Michelle: Good morning!
Johnny: Good morning, Michelle. How are you?
Michelle: I’m fine. Is this Mr. Johnny Caps?
Johnny: That it is.
Michelle: Hello. How are you?
Johnny: I’m good. I always start off my interviews with these two questions. The first is: What were your pop-cultural likes growing up, like favorites movies and music?
Michelle: Well, I have been a film buff since, probably, the age of 5. I fell in love with old movies. Do you remember the Million Dollar Movie when you were little? It used to come on Channel 9 in New York. Every night they showed an old movie. This was in the days before cable. Now we have over 200 stations…Then, we only had a handful of stations. Every night I would curl up in front of our little black-and-white television and watch the Million Dollar Movie. It was through the Million Dollar Movie that I saw all the wonderful actors and actresses of our time. I saw people like Judy Garland and Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and Cary Grant and Gregory Peck. I love all the classic movies, like Gone With The Wind, starring Vivien Leigh, and Some Like It Hot, directed by Billy Wilder with Marilyn Monroe. Every classic film that you could think of, I would always enjoy as a child. As far as music goes, my great love for music actually came from watching old movies. So many of my peers in grammar school were listening to AM Radio, but I loved Gershwin when I was 8 years old because I had seen Rhapsody In Blue with Cary Grant. I loved Irving Berlin because I watched There’s No Business Like Show Business with Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey. I loved all the old musicals, and it was from the old musicals that I developed this great love for American standards, Cole Porter and, as I said, the Gershwins and Harold Arlen and all of Judy Garland’s movies. Those are my tastes. As a matter of fact, I’m putting together now a one-woman show that incorporates my love for American standards with the story of my life. That love for classic American standards continues today.
Johnny: Cool. To my second question: What were your high school days like?
Michelle: Well, Johnny, you know my movie, An Autobiography Of Michelle Maren, talks about my childhood quite a bit, and I did not have a happy childhood. I came from a history of abuse. I was abused physically, emotionally, sexually. I was neglected, abandoned by my father. My high school years? I did go to a very prestigious all-girls prep school, but I wasn’t very happy, because at home I was being abused by my mother and I wound up running away from home at the age of 17. I found myself in Times Square, and by the time I was 18, I worked in the sex industry. While many other 18 year old girls were going to their prom, I was go-go dancing in little bars in New Jersey. As a teenager I was lost, wounded, damaged. I didn’t have the tools to make wise decisions and I didn’t have any support system. I had no family, no friends. I had no high school diploma. I left before I graduated, so that’s how I wound up drifting into the sex industry and stayed there for 8 years of my life. I was so grateful that I was able to get out, because once you get in, it is not easy to get out of the sex industry, but I did at the age of 26.
Johnny: I see. You won several beauty pageant titles in the early 80s. Were those beauty pageants at cut-throat as fiction makes them out to be?
Michelle: The answer is yes (Laughing). They are, they are! They are very cut-throat. What was the famous movie that was made about beauty pageants? I’m trying to remember the name of it.
Johnny: I believe it was Smile.
Michelle: Smile, thank you. Smile, yes. I could relate to things that went on in Smile. Wasn’t Bruce Dern in that?
Johnny: He was.
Michelle: Yes. When I was in the Miss Big Apple Beauty Contest, there were things going on behind the scenes. Blow-dryers being stolen just before the show started. One woman had her fishnet stockings ripped mysteriously. Yeah, it was pretty cut-throat. I think as you go higher up in the beauty pageant world, it gets more cut-throat, but I was just Miss Big Apple, although I had been in a previous beauty pageant before that, and I didn’t even make it to the semi-finals. All I could think was “I am so ugly because I didn’t even make it to the semi-finals” (Laughing). Because I came from this very unloved background, I had the need, this constant need for validation. Unfortunately, that’s why I think a lot of young women go into beauty pageants. It’s to get validation, someone to say “you’re okay. You’re pretty. You’re a winner”, and then when you don’t win, it can be quite devastating. When I entered the Miss Big Apple Beauty Contest, I was determined that I was going to try my best. I was going to try not only 100%, but 120%. I really gave it my all, and I wound up winning, and I remember the girls that were sobbing behind the stage. I remember consoling them and telling them that this was not the end of the world, but yet if I had lost, I would probably be sobbing, too. It’s quite sad that, in this day and age, there are still beauty pageants going on. If I had a daughter, I would certainly not want her to do that. The Miss America pageant claims to be a scholarship pageant. Well, there are certainly ways to get scholarships other than walking around on a stage in your bathing suit.
Johnny: Definitely. To my next question: You had uncredited roles in two Italian action movies, 1990: The Bronx Warriors in 1982 and Escape From The Bronx in 1983. How did you get involved in those movies?
Michelle: Well, The Bronx Warriors, I believe I answered an ad in one of the trades. It was probably either Backstage or Show Business, and I showed up for the audition with a lot of other women. The director was Italian. In fact, the entire crew was from Italy. No one spoke English. I only filmed one day, but the day I filmed, it wasn’t in the Bronx. I believe we were actually in Brooklyn, and I believe we filmed with the Hell’s Angels. No one could understand anything the director said because he only spoke Italian. It was not a very organized shoot. It was hot. They didn’t feed us. It wasn’t a union job, so we weren’t very well-treated. When the film eventually came out, I think Leonard Maltin gave it a Bomb rating. I think now, though, it has a cult following. The other film I don’t remember doing. I saw it on IMDB, and I don’t remember doing it that at all. I have no memory of that.
Johnny: It’s possible they might have had stock footage from Bronx Warriors put into Escape From The Bronx…I mean, footage that didn’t make it into Bronx Warriors might have made it into Escape From The Bronx, and your footage might have been among that.
Michelle: That is possible. Considering the budget that they had for The Bronx Warriors, which was almost nothing, yes, I could see them cutting corners by doing that for the follow-up (Laughing).
Johnny: As you spent a lot of time in 1980s New York, did you ever feel that the city might get to the point of how it was depicted in those two movies?
Michelle: I actually never watched those two movies, so I don’t know. How was it portrayed in those two movies? My experience in The Bronx Warriors was so bad, and the Leonard Maltin review was so bad, I never watched it.
Johnny: They were your typical post-apocalyptic movies. Those were big in the 70s and 80s.
Michelle: Well, I tell you, when I walk around and I see the pollution, how we are destroying our planet, we are destroying ourselves by pollution, by terrorism, by hatred in general, I think in a way we are destroying ourselves and really have no one to blame but ourselves.
Johnny: I see. To come back to music, which we discussed earlier, what are your favorite songs to sing?
Michelle: I can tell you some of the songs I’m going to be singing in my one-woman show.
Johnny: Sure!
Michelle: Gershwin songs, like one of my favorites, “Someone To Watch Over Me”, which is a masterpiece. “Our Love Is Here To Stay”. I also sing a great song called “God Bless The Child” by Billie Holiday.
Johnny: Oh, yeah, I’m familiar with that.
Michelle: I also sing some great uptempo songs, like “The Lady Is A Tramp”, and I add my own lyrics to the song. I sing some Broadway songs. For example, I sing “Cabaret” and “New York, New York”. I also have a lot of banter in my act, so I talk a lot about my experiences, working in the sex industry, being a go-go dancer, trying to break into legitimate show business and always failing. I try to incorporate the lyrics of the song into the stories I tell about my life.
Johnny: It’s obvious you love standards, so what are your feelings on other genres, like rock music and dance music?
Michelle: When you say dance music, are you talking about dance music today?
Johnny: I guess. Yeah, we’ll say dance music today.
Michelle: Well, dance music today? I have no clue. I’m 54 years old, Johnny, and there comes a time in life, and I think this is true with most people, when musically, you sort of stop. You don’t listen to the radio anymore. You just listen to the same music you’ve been listening to. I sort of stopped somewhere in the 80s, so I have no clue what dance music is today, but I can tell you: Back in the 70s, I was a disco diva, honey! I loved my Donna Summer. I loved my Bee Gees and Miss Gloria Gaynor. I would call myself a disco diva absolutely. That was my dance music.
Johnny: I like that music, too. When it comes to music, according to the IMDB, you have a lot of Japanese fans of your music. What’s the difference between foreign and domestic audiences for your singing?
Michelle: Well, you know, Johnny, I worked in several Japanese piano bars for many years when I lived in New York. From what I hear, they don’t really exist anymore, but back in the 80s, they were small nightclubs that featured a piano player. I would sing standards in English, but I also had a repetoire of Japanese songs.
At this point, Michelle asked if I wanted to hear a sample of her Japanese singing, and I agreed. She sounded lovely. We pick up from her Japanese song.
Michelle: Don’t ask me what it means. I don’t know (Laughing). I had maybe 20 Japanese songs in my repetoire. I also sang duets with the customers, sometimes in English and sometimes in Japanese. The Japanese audience back then…Again, this is the 80s. I don’t know what it’s like now, but back then, they had a great love of standards. I remember “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” was a big hit. They loved Broadway songs. I sang “New York, New York” at least twice a night. They loved songs from A Chorus Line and Elvis Presley. Those were the songs that they liked back then. When I was singing, karaoke had not made its’ way over from Japan into mainstream America yet. It was mainly standards and Broadway songs.
Johnny: You mention karaoke. That was a hobby of mine in my 20s. I really enjoyed it a lot. The bar where I did it ended up stopping it when a pool table became more popular and profitable, but there was one final evening of karaoke this year to give the woman who ran it a big send-off before she moved, and it was really a lot of fun.
Michelle: Karaoke is a lot of fun.
Johnny: To get back to you, you also spent some time as the opening act for Tiny Tim. How did you land that gig?
Michelle: I met Tiny Tim at the Miss Big Apple pageant. He knew one of the young women who was also competing, so he was in the audience. Afterward, he came backstage. He introduced himself, and he said “I would like you to be my opening act”. I said “Sure!”. I knew who Tiny Tim was. He was a very tall man. I guess “Tiny” was sort of ironic, because he was hardly tiny. He was tall, and girth-wise, he was rather large. He had very intense eyes. He would look down at me with these very intense eyes, but he was a very sweet man, and he gave everyone a chance. He loved to give up-and-comers a chance. What I really discovered when I started to perform with him was he had MANY opening acts. He had, like, 10 opening acts, and they were a variety of acts: A ventriloquist and children tap-dancing and singers. I was one of many opening acts for Tiny Tim. He was always very kind. The audiences loved him, absolutely loved him, always had a warm reception. He was a little, I won’t say strange, a little eccentric. He was a bit of a germaphobe, so he carried his own metal eating utensils and he had a big canister of wet wipes that he would carry with him. At the time, he was living with his mother in an old hotel on the Upper West Side by the park. He was very kind and he always treated me fairly.
Johnny: As he was an accomplished musician and musical historian, what advice did he have for your singing career?
Michelle: He didn’t really give me that much advice. Actually, I never really had that many deep conversations with Tiny. He always had this entourage around who traveled with him, and it seems like they consumed a lot of his energy and time. He never really talked to me about my career. He did like my dancing and my singing. For one of his opening acts, I did a song and dance number and he liked it a lot. He never gave me any advice as far as my career, but I did learn lessons from him. He did have a following. He had a very loyal following, and he did what he knew he did best. Tiny sang the songs that suited him, his style, his voice, his personality. He didn’t try to fit into someone else’s mold, so not from his words or from conversations I had with him, but just through observing him, I learned you have to follow your own voice and be true to yourself and not try to fit someone else’s mold.
Johnny: Excellent advice, not only for singing, but for life in general.
Michelle: Yes, yes.
Johny: To my next question: As you didn’t have the best experience during your brief stint in adult films, how did you react when the Rialto Report podcast wanted to speak to you?
Michelle: Oh, I was thrilled. I am not an advocate of porn, obviously, but I will speak to anyone. I don’t dislike people who work in porn. In fact, I even told the man who was giving the Rialto interview that some of the nicest people I ever met were my fellow porn performers. I have nothing against them at all, and what good is preaching to the choir? I received wonderful, warm responses from that interview. I don’t shirk away from pro-porn people just because I didn’t have a good experience. I still speak honestly. I say this is how I experienced it. These are my memories. Again, I was so well-received, and the man who did the interview was so kind that I was very pleased with it. I was thrilled that he wanted to do the interview. I invite more pro-porn sites to contact me. I will give you an interview any time you want.
Johnny: Now we come to your documentary. What made you decide to do a documentary about your life?
Michelle: Well, Johnny, let’s go back in time (Laughing). About 10 years ago, I began to write an autobiography on my computer. I got about as far as my teen years when I accidentally deleted all the files. This was an old computer, and it didn’t automatically save. I wasn’t able to retrieve it, even when I asked people to come and help. They couldn’t do it. I was very disappointed, and I procrastinated on starting the writing project again. Now, in 1995, I was watching P.O.V on PBS. Do you ever watch that show? It features a lot of documentaries.
Johnny: I think I’ve seen some of their stuff.
Michelle: Well, in 1995, they had a documentary called Jupiter’s Wife. I watched it, and I instantly fell in love with it. I saw this beautiful, almost lyrical portrayal of a woman who just happened to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Michel Negroponte was the filmmaker of Jupiter’s Wife, and because he did not define her by her diagnosis, I saw this as a non-judgmental portrayal of this woman’s life. Now fast-forward from 1995 to January of 2008. I still had this need to tell my story. I had deleted all of my written work. On this particular day in 2008, and this is the truth, Johnny Caps, I was divinely inspired to contact Michel Negroponte. The thought just entered my mind. I hadn’t been thinking about it before. I had watched Jupiter’s Wife many, many, many times between 1995 and 2008. The thought had never before occurred to me to contact this man until this moment. I Googled his name and sent him an e-mail, basically asking him to make a film about my life, and here we are, almost 8 years later, with An Autobiography Of Michelle Maren, opening in the U.S at Doc NYC, and in Canada at the Rendevous With Madness Film Festival. There’s a lesson there, Johnny. There’s a lesson. Always listen to the still, small voice within you, because it will never steer you wrong.
Johnny: Definitely good advice. As you were a co-director with Mr. Negroponte, which documentarians were your biggest influences in the making of your film?
Michelle: Well, first and foremost, it was Michel Negroponte and Jupiter’s Wife. The style, the intimacy, the poetic, lyrical quality I really loved. I’ve also loved other classic documentary films. Grey Gardens is one of my favorites. Hoop Dreams. Streetwise. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Streetwise. That was from the 80s.
Johnny: I’ve been meaning to see it, but it never received a DVD release. I know that they were doing Kickstarter funding for a follow-up documentary, and it was successfully funded. If they ever release it on DVD, I’d definitely be buying it.
Michelle: I know. It’s a shame and it’s shocking. It was nominated for an Oscar and it’s not available on DVD. It is quite shocking. Mostly my documentary tastes were films about the outsider. I’m a very narcissistic audience. I like to watch films I can identify with. I enjoy films with themes of poverty, abuse, mental illness, all the upbeat themes like that (Laughing). Alcoholism…Not that I was ever an alcoholic, but my father was an alcoholic. Drug addiction, which I also managed not to involve myself with, but I do like documentaries on those subjects. Did you ever see West 47th Street?
Johnny: I can’t say I have. Truthfully, my tastes run more towards fiction, but when it comes to documentaries, I tend to like concert movies. Gimme Shelter, Stop Making Sense, stuff like that.
Michelle: I see. I see. I guess I prefer the more intimate documentary where I can really get involved in someone else’s life, where I can peer into someone else’s life. When I was growing up, as I explained to you, I suffered many forms of abuse. Physical, emotional, sexual, neglect. I can tell you the thing that affected me the most was being isolated, and because I was so isolated as a child, I wasn’t really allowed to have friends over. I wasn’t allowed to visit other kids’ homes. I think I can count on one hand, with some fingers left over, how many times I went to visit a school friend’s house. The isolation really affected me, and because I didn’t get to see other people’s lives as I was growing up, I think that’s where my love of documentaries came from. It gives me a chance to peer into someone else’s life.
Johnny: Definitely understandable. I think that’s a really good reason to enjoy documentaries. Speaking of your own documentary, there’s a scene in there where a dramatic moment at your father’s grave turns comedic when you take a fall. You laugh, Michel laughs, and I must admit, I laughed, too. Were you leery of leaving that scene in, or did you want that to be a part of it?
Michelle: Well, I knew that it would win up in the film whether I wanted it to or not (Laughing). No, because that’s life. When I started out making this project, Johnny, I wanted the film to show all aspects of a human being, all aspects of THIS human being. What am I? Who am I? I am funny. I am goofy. I’m serious. I’m depressed. I’m out of control. I’m anxious. You know, all aspects, and there are times when, yeah, I’m goofy. There are times when I’m clumsy. There are times when I fall off my walker (Laughing). No, I didn’t mind it. Also, I have to tell you, that trip to Florida with Michel was so fraught with heaviness. When we landed, there was Tropical Storm Isaac, and so the weather was even dark and gloomy, and I was even cold, and it was Florida. It was just a heavy. heavy trip, and a lot of sadness. When I fell off the walker, it was this huge relief, this release of tension that was so needed. It was actually quite freeing, and it is a funny moment. I think the film needs as many funny moments as it can get. No, I didn’t mind that it wound up in the film, even though I looked pretty ridiculous.
Johnny: I see. Looping back to music, another documentary this year, called The Hunting Ground, features a Lady Gaga song called “‘Til It Happens To You”. I listened to the lyrics of that song, and then I saw your documentary. Considering the rough times you’ve dealt with, have you considered adding that song to your repetoire?
Michelle: I’m not familiar with Lady Gaga’s work. Again, any music post-1985 is kind of a blur for me, but I could probably check it out on YouTube.
Johnny: I would recommend doing that. It comes from The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape on college campuses, but the song, which was co-written by Lady Gaga and Diane Warren, could really apply to any tragedy you’ve experienced in your life, not just rape, but really any horrible thing you could imagine. It’s a song about basically saying to people “you can’t really understand the kind of crap I’ve gone through until you actually deal with it”. It’s about finding strength in yourself and in others to deal with these problems. It’s about trying to be strong no matter how difficult things can be.
Michelle: Well, it sounds like a great song. I’ll have to investigate it on YouTube. You know, Elvis sang a song in his live performances called “Walk A Mile In My Shoes”, which basically said, “before you criticize me, walk a mile in my shoes and see how far you get”.
Johnny: Definitely. What makes you happiest today?
Michelle: What makes me happiest today, other than continuing to promote An Autobiography Of Michelle Maren and working on my own-woman show, and I’m starting to work on that autobiography again. I discovered that you can only fit so much into 80 minutes. The things that make me the most happy right now are being a mental health recovery advocate and a motivational speaker. My mission now, Johnny, is to give hope to others who have experienced adversity in their lives. My message to other people is that, no matter what you’ve done in your past, no matter what your age or what labels society has placed on you, or what challenges (physical, emotional, mental) that have come your way in your life, it’s never too late. It’s never too late for mental health recovery. It’s never too late to change your life. It is never too late to achieve your dreams and to help other people. What makes me happiest today is helping other people. I so hope that our film, An Autobiography Of Michelle Maren, will give people hope, and give them the strength to never give up. It shows that a person who has gone through all the things I have gone through…Aside from all the abuse, I have been rejected by all 5 siblings. I’ve been homeless. I’ve eaten in soup kitchens and food pantries. 8 years I worked in the sex industry. I had a fiancee, who I loved dearly, who I later found out was gay and was seeing transgender prostitutes behind my back. I was obese. After I left the sex industry, I was clinically obese for 10 years. I was in three car accidents that have left me physically challenged. I am in chronic pain every day, and of course I have had mental health challenges. Over the years, I’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorders, clinical depression, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD from abuse and working in the sex industry…With every new psychiatrist came a new diagnosis and a new medication. I’ve been hospitalized in psych wards 5 times, the last time being 2003. I had numerous suicide attempts, and once, I even died and had to be zapped back to life twice. If I survived all of these things, and was able to put it on film, and come out publicly, which was in itself a challenge, a challenge to open myself up and trust another human being, more than I ever had before, when I shared with Michel things about myself I hadn’t shared with anyone before, not even my therapist. If I was able to relive and re-experience all of these painful events of my life, and come through on the other side a stronger person than I was when I started, a recovered person, a healthy person, a whole person…This is what makes me happiest: when people see the film and write to me, or meet me in person, and say “thank you. Thank you for giving me hope”, and already I’ve been receiving wonderful, wonderful responses from people who have seen the film, that is what makes me happy: Giving other people hope.
Johnny: That’s a wonderful thing. I’ve been up against my share of rough stuff myself. Nothing to the degree that you’ve experienced, but I was bullied a lot. I snapped from the bullying and landed in a mental hospital where I was diagnosed with Aspergers’ Syndrome. I lost both my parents at a young age, losing my dad to a heart attack when I was 12 and my mom to cancer when I was 27. I haven’t exactly had an easy life, either, but I’ve made it to a place where I’m very happy now with myself. With a psychologist and the right mix of medications, I’m able to do what I love. I work in a retail job for the pay, and I write for fun and get to speak to talents I admire, like yourself.
Michelle: That’s wonderful. I’m so happy to hear that you’ve overcome all of the challenges in your life. You know, mental health recovery is real. It is possible. That’s what I want people to know, that you can recover from anything, that you can recover from loss and rejection and abandonment and abuse and even working in the sex industry, and you can recover from mental illness. Mental health recovery is very personal. It is different for each person. It is self-directed. For me, it’s a state of wellness, where I’m physically and emotionally stabilized so I can achieve my goals and function well in society. For me, it’s very holistic. It involves all areas of my life, and these areas have to be in a state of balance and harmony. The spiritual, the mental, the physical, the financial, the creative, the environmental, where I live, and the social, that is, my relationships. It sounds to me, Johnny, like you’ve gotten to that state of being where you are able to achieve your goals, where you are able to stabilize and you’re functioning well in society. To me, that is the definition of mental health recovery, so congratulations to you.
Johnny: Thank you very much, and now we come back to you. This is the question I end every interview with, and it’s this: If you could go back to your youth with the knowledge that you have now, would you do anything differently?
Michelle: When you say my youth, how far are we going back? You mean, when I was a teenager? When I was a child?
Johnny: Teenager.
Michelle: Well, when I was a teenager, and this was in the 70s, back then, no one talked about anything. I was being abused, but I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t tell anyone. Of course, I was told it was a secret. What happened in our home remained in our home. I didn’t go to anyone else. I remember I had one teacher at the exclusive school that I went to. She was my British Lit teacher. She was not a nun. She was a layperson. She suspected something was up, and she said to me “Michelle, if something’s happening at home, you should tell me”. I didn’t say anything because that’s how I was trained. I don’t blame myself, because that’s all I knew, and I kept silent out of fear. It would’ve been nice if I had been able to open up to an adult who would’ve been able to help me, but I didn’t have the tools. Sometimes it’s a waste of time, Johnny, looking through the rear view mirror. If we get into that mindset, woulda, coulda, shoulda, it’s kind of a waste of time. These days, I try to practice mindfulness, living in the now, living in today. I can’t blame myself for the things I’ve done in the past because I did the best that I could with the tools that I had. I really can’t look back and say that I would’ve changed anything because I wasn’t able to. What I can change, what I do have control of, is what I do today. You know, we can’t control the behavior of other people, but we can control our own behavior, so this is what I concentrate on now. In the past, I thought my self-esteem was dependent upon the opinions of others. Now I know it comes from within me, so that is what I now focus one, rather than wishing to have done different things in the past.
Johnny: Okay.
Michelle: May I please give a plug for my film screenings coming up in November?
Johnny: Sure.
Michelle: I’m so excited, Johnny, because finally…I met Michel Negroponte in 2008, and here we are in 2015, and our film will be making its’ U.S premiere at the DOC NYC Film Festival on lucky Friday, November 13th at 10:45 AM at the IFC Theatre on 6th Avenue and on Sunday, November 15th, at 5:30 PM at the Bowtie Chelsea Cinema on West 23rd Street, and the film will be making its’ Canadian premiere at The Rendevous WIth Madness Film Festival, Tuesday, November 10th, at 6:30 PM at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in beautiful Toronto. I can’t wait to see it again. If anyone needs more information and wants to know how to get tickets, please go to my Official Michelle Maren Facebok page.. Please visit my official Facebook page and say hello. You can get information on the screenings and other information on the film and activities I’m up to. Please drop me a line. I love to hear from people.
Johnny: I would like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview.
Michelle: I enjoyed this interview very much. You’re a great interviewer.
Johnny: Thank you very much, and you’ve been a good interview subject.
Michelle: Well, thank you, and if you ever want to do this again with one of my future projects, please let me know.
Johnny: I’ll be in touch.
Michelle: Okay, Johnny. You have a wonderful day.
Johnny: Thank you very much and have a good day.
Michelle: You, too now. Bye bye.
Johnny: Okay, bye.
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I would like to thank Michelle for reaching out to me, and I encourage you to seek out her documentary when it’s released. I watched it on VIMEO in preparation for the interview, and I think Ms. Maren and Mr. Negroponte created a wonderful film.
Who will I Flashback with next? Stay tuned.