Connor: But as it happens…
Peter: As it happens, The Last Unicorn is the best thing that Rankin-Bass ever did. And I’m not the only one who thinks so—Arthur Rankin told me so himself, even as he admitted wishing they’d had a bigger budget, so they could have done this or that part better. But the vocal work was exceptional, because somehow they managed to pull an extraordinary cast together: Alan Arkin, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, Rene Auberjenois, Christopher Lee, Jeff Bridges, Tammy Grimes, Keenan Wynn, Paul Fries, Brother Theodore…and they let me write the script, which I felt was necessary, because otherwise it would have been done by their house writer, Romeo Muller…and thank goodness they went out and got Jimmy Webb to write the songs and score, because otherwise that would have been handled by Jules Bass, who was a closet songwriter, and their house composer, Maury Laws.
Connor: Did you meet any of the cast?
Peter: I actually became good friends with Christopher Lee and Rene Auberjenois because of this film, for which I will always be grateful. Although Christopher was born in the 20th Century, in style he is really the last of the great 19th Century actors, and either the most-literate or second-most literate performer I’ve ever met. I could never decide. As for Rene, he could have played any role in that movie and I would have been happy. He could have played the unicorn! He’s that talented. I’d been seeing him on stage ever since my last year of college in Pittsburgh, and later when he was part of ACT in San Francisco.
Connor: In many respects, what made The Last Unicorn better than other Rankin-Bass productions was that they handed more of the control off to outsiders. That’s true even on the visual side—for years they’d subcontracted much of the work on their films to various Japanese companies, but with The Last Unicorn they really allowed the Japanese artists and animators a much freer hand.
Peter: Exactly. Considering what I was braced for, I have no complaints. Many things about the movie are quite wonderful, and it has amazed me by staying around. I didn’t bargain for the book still being here 40 years later, and I certainly didn’t expect that the film would not only be here 25 years later, but actually have a whole new life, and be selling better than ever thanks to its release on DVD.
Connor: The film’s long-term success is even more remarkable considering the problems it had on release. At first everything was great. Even though it opened on only 648 screens around the country, and got less than $150,000 in promotion and advertising, it was the #6 film overall in the nation and #2 in per-screen earnings—the only film doing better on a per-screen basis was the re-release of The Empire Strikes Back. By that measure, The Last Unicorn was actually beating First Blood, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, and An Officer and a Gentleman. But 17 days into release its distributor went bankrupt, and poof—the film vanished, not to be resurrected in America until cable television and VHS tape rentals introduced it to millions.
Peter: It just kind of snuck up on everyone, year by year and over several generations. I’m constantly meeting people who were raised on the film, people who tell me that they watched it so much as children that they actually memorized it.
Connor: After that, the next big twist in the history of The Last Unicorn took another 20 years to happen. In a lot of ways they weren’t great years for you. You got divorced, remarried, and divorced again. You moved from California to Washington, then back to California. The book version of The Last Unicorn sold steadily, and made you a trickle of money. The film version sold steadily but made you nothing at all, thanks to some fraudulent movie industry accounting. And you wrote everything under the sun, but none of it got a lot of attention—more treatments and screenplays, mostly for forgettable animation, a number of nonfiction books, now and then an introduction or an article, plus a handful of novels that garnered minimal sales and little notice outside the SF/fantasy field. Through the whole period you were in a mostly downward financial spiral, with only occasional upticks, like when you wrote the “Sarek” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s safe to say that your career was in a slump.
Peter: In the ‘90s I was writing some of the best fiction I think I’d ever done—I’m very fond of my books Tamsin and The Magician of Karakosk, and The Innkeeper’s Song is my personal favorite among my novels. But I was with a publisher who publicized no one, and I didn’t have any strong, productive editorial relationships. Writers complain about editors all the time, but that’s only because there are so few great ones out there. I got spoiled early on by working with some of the best.
Connor: Now you’re stuck with me.
Peter: Well, you do have this disconcerting habit of invariably putting your finger on the stuff that was always bothering me, that I was hoping nobody would notice. You also nag effectively and are pretty good with titles, which, as I said, I’m usually not. [laughs] You have my permission to stick around. Things have been going in the right direction since you showed up.
Connor: It’s been an interesting ride, working together. A little bit like the writing process you described—one part planning, five parts figuring it out as we go along. The first project we did related to The Last Unicorn was producing an unabridged audiobook version.
Peter: Back in 1990 I recorded a severely truncated reading on cassette for Penguin Highbridge Audio, but that edition was so utterly chopped up—more than half the book was gone—that I found myself trying to sneak in lines from memory while I was in the recording studio.
Connor: I tried listening to that. I tell people it’s like hearing a wonderful reading of the Kng Jms Bble.
Peter: I’ve never been able to bring myself to listen to it at all. The one we did together was much more fun, despite the fact that I was struggling with throat problems that made production go very slowly. Part of the pleasure was having Jim Lively as the recording engineer—he’s got astonishing ears, and since he knows the book so well he was able to help direct me as I read, not just make sure I didn’t swallow a word or cough when I shouldn’t have. Another part of the fun was having original music written for the project by your friend Jeff Slingluff. Jeff is a fine guitarist, and the main instrument he used for his compositions was a classical guitar that had been owned by a dear, dear friend of mine, Joe Mazo, which I inherited after Joe’s death. I like the feeling that Joe was involved in this, too.
Connor: And then came “Two Hearts.” Do you remember your reaction when I asked you to give me a new story to use as promotion for the audiobook release?
Peter: I wanted nothing to do with it. I’d been telling people for 37 years that I would never go back to The Last Unicorn again, not for any amount of praise or fame or money. Not even if I could.
Connor: So why did you, finally?
Peter: Well…I was intrigued by the idea of having a limited edition hardcover to give away to the first audiobook customers. You also made it easier by telling me that I didn’t have to go anywhere near any of my previous characters. But what really did me in was the dangerous part of my imagination that can’t resist a challenge regarding words and stories. I can be lured into writing something I’ve never tried before just because I’ve never done it—like the time I wrote a libretto for an opera based on my story “Come Lady Death.” So after I grumped at you and went away I started to wonder if I actually could re-enter the unicorn’s world…at which point Sooz came into my head and the story just happened. It flowed. It was the exact opposite of my experience writing The Last Unicorn. I locked onto her voice, the voice of this nine-and-a-half year-old girl who was telling the story from the first sentence, and I just followed her. It was one of the very rare occasions where I felt from beginning to end that I knew what I was doing. Some of that certainty came from powerful recent experience: in the story King Lír is on the border of senility when Schmendrick and Molly find him again. Well, my mother Rebecca was going through something similar…a loss of mental acuity and function that wasn’t Alzheimer’s, but just the result
of getting old. Here was the woman who taught me to read, without whose tutelage and support I would never have become a writer, and every day I could see that her own wonderful mind was faltering. I was thinking very much of her when I wrote King Lír. I know that. And it is one reason this story means a great deal to me.
Connor: It was the easiest edit of any story of yours I’ve ever tackled. Just minor tweaks and cutting one sentence where you described Schmendrick doing something overtly magical, but in too showy a style. That was all. The biggest change in the story was actually suggested by your webmaster, Kim Flournoy. She pointed out an inadvertent echo of Tolkien, which you easily corrected by changing the name and gender of King Lír’s secretary.
Peter: That was a good catch. No Grima Wormtongues, please—I didn’t have anything like that in mind when I was writing. Of course, I didn’t have a title, either.
Connor: That was a little like your big Schmendrick revelation. The title was there in your story all the time, staring us both in the face, waiting to be found, but it took me weeks to wake up to it. Lír tells Sooz that griffins have two hearts, both lion and eagle. And as I read that bit of dialog for maybe the 47th time, it hit me that “Two Hearts” was not only a beautiful and evocative phrase, it also summed up the multiple emotional pairings that form the thematic focus of the story: Lír and the unicorn, Schmendrick and Molly, Sooz and her lost Felicitas, Lisene and Lír, Sooz and her dog Malka, Lír and the griffin, the unicorn and the griffin…all of the characters, actually. Looking closely at “Two Hearts” is like staring into a kaleidoscope of dualities. And now it’s a dual award winner, too—it got you a Hugo and a Nebula. Your first of each, though I’m betting there will be more. How does it feel to wake up in the morning and see them on your mantle?
Peter: It’s a paradox, because on the one hand of course I’m immensely pleased. But on the other I’m terribly aware that some of the other people who won Hugos and Nebulas this year had been nominated nine or ten times before finally winning. I was obviously very lucky to win both awards my first time around. The thing is, though, when you’ve been writing for nearly five decades, as I have, awards don’t mean quite as much as they would have when I was younger. Now I’m thrilled and delighted, of course! But then I think okay, fun’s fun, time to get back to work. In both cases I had convinced myself that somebody else was going to win. And in the case of the Nebula, two of the people I was going up against were old friends of mine, so my head is still full of congratulatory things I want to say to them.
Connor: One of the wonderful aspects of your Hugo win was that up on the stage with you that night was Betty Ballantine, the person who chose The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place as the launch titles in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.
Peter: That was magic. I hadn’t seen Betty, whom I once knew very well, since her husband Ian’s death. But in the old days I used to visit her and Ian whenever I could, and loved asking them questions about their history, because they essentially invented the American paperback industry. And there was Betty on stage at the Hugo Awards, 87 years old, in a gold lamé dress, as beautiful as any woman I’ve ever seen. I remember looking at her and thinking “It’s true, what they say. At 20 years old you’ve got the face God gave you; at 30 years old you’ve got the face you’ve been making for yourself; and after 40, you’ve got the face you deserve.” Which explains exactly why she was so beautiful that night, and why I was thrilled to have my picture taken with her.
Connor: Now that you are an award-winner there’s all sorts of new activity spinning up around The Last Unicorn, some of it specifically made possible by “Two Hearts.” There is a new deluxe hardcover edition. Roc is making plans for a special new 40th anniversary trade paperback. We’ve got two different graphic novel adaptations of The Last Unicorn in the works, one in American comic style and the other in Japanese Manga style. There might even be some hope of more movie action, thanks to the leverage “Two Hearts” pulls out of certain obscure clauses in your old film contract, plus the public attention that’s been brought to the way you’ve been stiffed out of your contractual share of the animated film’s earnings.
Peter: That would be nice—getting paid what you’re owed is always good—but I’ve been around the movie business too long to bank on it. My focus has to stay on the one thing that’s purely mine, which is the writing. Right now I’ve got one novel to polish and two new ones to finish, not to mention a bunch of story commitments, and then I’ll be coming back to the world of The Last Unicorn one more time.
Connor: Right. The full-blown sequel novel you said that you’d never write.
Peter: It starts on the day Sooz turns 17, and finally whistles the special melody that Molly Grue taught her in “Two Hearts.” I’m looking forward to finding out what happens when she does.
Connor: You and a world full of readers.
Peter: In the end it’s always character with me, really, more than plot or action. It’s always voice. There has always been someone, somewhere in my head, telling me stories. For as long as I can type or hold a pen in my hand I’m going to do my best to share them.
—Berkeley, California
May 2007
UPDATES (June 2013)
The American-style graphic novel project mentioned in this interview was scrapped over creative differences with the publisher, but in 2009 the project was picked up by a different comics house, IDW. Six individual Last Unicorn comics were put out in 2010, and the 2011 graphic novel spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. This adaptation was edited by Mariah Huehner, with a script by Peter B. Gillis and Peter S. Beagle, and art by Renae de Liz and Ray Dillon.
As part of his 52/50 Project, in which he celebrated his 70th birthday by coming up with a new song lyric or poem every week for a year, Peter wrote two songs related to The Last Unicorn: “Aggravating Woman,” in which Captain Cully looks back on his time with Molly Grue, and “Deep Woods (The Unicorn Sings to Memory).”
In 2011 Peter published “The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon”—a new Schmendrick story set before The Last Unicorn”—in his collection Sleight of Hand. He has since written three other new stories about this character, and plans to put them all together in a book called Green-Eyed Boy.
The independent essential oils company Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has released a line of 28 different scents inspired by the characters and themes of The Last Unicorn.
The long-running conflict over nonpayment of Last Unicorn film royalties ended in 2010, with a settlement that opened up many new business opportunities for Peter and the property. Most exciting, perhaps, is the screening tour of the animated film that started in April 2013 and will continue through the end of 2015. This tour, featuring an amazing digital print of the film, will give hundreds of thousands of fans around the world a way to meet Peter and see The Last Unicorn on the big screen for the first time. Details can be found at www.lastunicorntour.com.
Works by Peter S. Beagle
(as of June 2013)
NOVELS
A Fine and Private Place, 1960
The Last Unicorn, 1968
The Folk of the Air, 1986 (Mythopoeic Fantasy Award)
The Innkeeper’s Song, 1993 (Locus Award)
The Unicorn Sonata, 1996
Tamsin, 1999 (Mythopoeic Fantasy Award)
COLLECTIONS
The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, 1978
The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories, 1997 (originally published in the United States as Giant Bones)
The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances, 1997
The Line Between, 2006
We Never Talk About My Brother, 2009
The 52/50 Collection, 2010 (ebook only)
Four Years, Five Seasons, 2011 (audiobook only)
Sleight of Hand, 2011
LIMITED EDITION CHAPBOOKS
Lila the Werewolf, 1974 (Capra Press)
Your Friendly Nei
ghborhood Magician: Songs and Early Poems, 2006 (Tachyon Publications)
Strange Roads, 2008 (Dreamhaven Books)
LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVERS
The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, 2007 (Subterranean Press)
The Last Unicorn Deluxe Edition, 2007 (Roc/Barnes & Noble)
Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle, 2010 (Subterranean Press)
Return, 2010 (Subterranean Press)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
The Last Unicorn, 2011
The Last Unicorn Deluxe Edition, 2012
SHORT FICTION
“Telephone Call,” 1957
“My Daughter’s Name is Sarah,” 1958
“In the Hospital,” 1961
“Farrell and Melissa,” 1962
“Come Lady Death,” 1963
“Lila the Werewolf,” 1971
“The Naga,” 1992
“Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros,” 1995
“Julie’s Unicorn,” 1996
“The Last Song of Sirit Byar,” 1996
“Choushi-wai’s Story,” 1997
“Giant Bones,” 1997