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Charles Frazier came to East Carolina University for the 2012 Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming. Opening the event's exploration of "Litflix: Adapting North Carolina Literature into Film" (the theme of NCLR 2012 and the literary homecoming), the author of Cold Mountain participated with two of the other visiting writers, James Dodson and Timothy Tyson, on a panel called "The Blockbuster, the Independent Film, and the Made-for-TV Movie: Different Venues, Different Audiences" and then he brought the event to a close as the keynote speaker. The keynote session was an open interview with Frazier conducted by NCLR Editor Margaret Bauer.1
The following interview has been transcribed and edited from Frazier's responses to questions about the movie Cold Mountain and other film-related topics during these two sessions at the Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming, as well as a followup interview Bauer conducted with the author in Asheville, North Carolina, on 16 November 2012 (for more about this occasion, see the interview in the special feature section of this issue).2 To introduce the interview, we include here excerpts from Frazier's opening remarks during the morning panel, in which he describes his experience working with director and screenwriter Anthony Minghella.3
To begin, read how Charles Frazier reminded the literary homecoming audience during the morning panel discussion of a time when Cold Mountain was new, before he became aware of what an impression his first novel was making, before he could know what a literary sensation it would be. He recalled during his response, for example, the "huge" crowds he was drawing at the time, including one that he remembers as being about a dozen people, if you counted the bookstore employees:
CHARLES FRAZIER: I was a first novelist; my book had been out for two weeks. I'd been out doing a few little book tour things in North Carolina, but about two weeks after the book was published, my agent called and said, "You need to be home all day tomorrow. There's going to be a phone call at this time and this time and this time and this time, and it's going to be producers and directors and screenwriters wanting to buy your book." That was just crazy. But people called up, and some of them were famous...
