The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #14: "White Lotus" Producer Mark Kamine

"The fact that the first phase of my film career culminated in this major phenomenon, 'The Sopranos,' made that period seem a naturally enticing thing to write about."

Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.

Here’s the fourteenth installment, featuring Mark Kamine, a producer of film and television shows, including The White Lotus and The Sopranos. -Sari Botton

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Mark Kamine, photographed by Fabio Lovino

Mark Kamine, an Emmy winning executive producer of The White Lotus, has worked in the film industry for over 30 years including in producer roles on the films American Hustle, Ted, Bad Moms and Silver Linings Playbook. His reviews and essays have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Sunday Book Review and The Believer. He is the author of On Locations: Lessons from My Life On Set with The Sopranos and in the Film Industry.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I'm 66. I've been writing with the idea of being a writer since I was 19 or 20. 

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

On Locations: Lessons Learned on Set with The Sopranos and in the Film Industry. February 6, 2024.

What number book is this for you?

Two. First was a novel called Not So Fast, published in 2020 by Unbound Books, a UK crowd-sourcing publisher. It's kind of a prequel to this one, ending with my first film job.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

It's a work memoir, with personal elements.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book? (Up to one paragraph.)

I was a location manager in the film business in New York when a producer called about a series that would be made for HBO, known at the time for movie reruns and live sports. The show was The Sopranos, and a year later it was what everyone everywhere was talking about. On Locations is the book I've written about that show and the other jobs I worked on in the early days of my career. I wrote it out of an interest in sharing how this very public-facing business works in a day-to-day way by someone out of the spotlight and with the ongoing concerns most people have about family and paying bills.

On Locations is the book I've written about [The Sopranos] and the other jobs I worked on in the early days of my career. I wrote it out of an interest in sharing how this very public-facing business works in a day-to-day way by someone out of the spotlight and with the ongoing concerns most people have about family and paying bills.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I was a big reader from 12 years old on, and not long after I found books I had the idea that I would be a writer. I took some writing classes in college—one with Carlos Fuentes, who didn't teach us much about writing but wore impressive, beautifully tailored suits––and more intensely and beneficially after college with Gordon Lish. I emerged from the couple workshops I took with him with a few short stories that got into lit mags. I also started writing book reviews, including for the Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Believer and a few others. Meanwhile out of necessity, in my early 30s, I found myself a career in film.

It was recent, negative criticism of my first book, faulted for a lack of imagination because "the characters appear to be based on real people," that got me thinking, powered by a big streak of contrarianism that I think is not uncommon in writers, artists and frankly in human beings, to make my next one about real people, undisguised. The fact that the first phase of my film career culminated in this major phenomenon, The Sopranos, made that period seem a naturally enticing thing to write about. And as I was formulating the plan to do just that, Covid happened, so with my professional career shut down for a while, I got On Locations going.

Order the book…

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

I'd almost always written my reviews over a day or two, almost always on weekends while I was on a job, and I always found it grueling to remain at my desk for the four or five hours it took to get a review down on paper. My other writing—short stories, a few stabs at novels—was done haphazardly, half an hour or less at a time, when work and life permitted.

I didn't have that steady, regular writing-time routine that I read about (and envied) when writers talked about their regimens. With Covid—and no film production—I suddenly had all the time I thought I wanted and found it hard to sit down for even an hour or two a day. I had to build up to it. And by the time I got used to it, work started up again, and I was back to the half hour a day if I was lucky, and an hour or two every Saturday and Sunday. But I had a good start on the book and over the following two years got through a draft I was ready to send out.

I'd written novels earlier in my life, four or five of them, which I sometimes buried in a drawer and sometimes sent out mostly to conclusive silence, though once I got a note back from a well-known independent publishing couple explaining that their dog attacked the manuscript and offering to look at another copy. With this book, I sent it to one place and it got accepted a week later. That response came from the senior editor and publisher of Steerforth Press, whom I got in touch with because he'd been for many years the neighbor of my wife's cousin. When I got his email I was stunned and walked into my wife's office and expressed, I think, my disbelief. She read the email and confirmed that the book had indeed been accepted.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I didn't use names of people who were not public figures and who did things I thought were unkind or unethical. I thought it was important to talk about these things in a workplace memoir set in a business that has been under a lot of scrutiny for behaviors that only became public lately. I also thought it was important to include the many unethical things I'd done myself for the sake of fairness and full disclosure. About other non-public people, I used first names when reporting neutrally or having nice things to say, and then the full names of well-known people. I didn't run the book by anyone other than my wife and a couple of writer friends, and eventually my editor and copy editor and proofreader, whose suggestions I listened to closely and accepted gratefully.

I didn't use names of people who were not public figures and who did things I thought were unkind or unethical. I thought it was important to talk about these things in a workplace memoir set in a business that has been under a lot of scrutiny for behaviors that only became public lately. I also thought it was important to include the many unethical things I'd done myself for the sake of fairness and full disclosure.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

There are some movie-related books I treasure, first among them John Sayles’ Thinking In Pictures (I was floored when he agreed to read mine and then again when he sent a blurb). And the same for Phillip Lopate, a rare combination of true film lover and great writer. Long before I wrote this book I would let him guide me to what was worth seeing. William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade is iconic. Sidney Lumet's book On Directing, too. And then Julia Phillips’ You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again for its fearless courage, and its titular understanding that there's a kind of omerta in play in the film world, like all insular occupations, that people have lots of reasons to keep in place, not all of them good reasons.

I love David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. It's great to read around in, also brave and totally idiosyncratic. Thomson doesn't care about received opinions or who has the power, he just says what he thinks. Of memoirs/personal writing in general, as learning tools and milestones, I love Frank Conroy's Stop-Time, and anything by Annie Ernaux, Deborah Levy, Geoff Dyer. Martin Amis's Experience, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Gore Vidal's Palimpsest, the latter with some of the best name-dropping out there, something I'm not opposed to if it suits the subject matter, as anyone reading my book will see.

And then there are non-fiction books, often travel books, that combine memoir and reporting, by writers like Normal Lewis and Nicolas Bouvier, exemplars of personal writing whose focus is less about the writer's own story and more about how the writer fits into a particular world at a particular time. Those are maybe closer models for my book than the classic memoirs or books by directors and writers. People at a remove from positions of power, plopped down in the middle of a foreign place, who spend their time closely observing things and conveying their experience and their understanding of what's going on around them. There's no claim to objective truth or ultimate knowledge, just one person's recording of what they saw and felt.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

I've been an aspiring writer for most of my life, so my heart is with people in that place. If they're getting started and looking to me, maybe they can take comfort in how much time they have to figure it out. And then like me, maybe while they're figuring it out, their life is slyly providing them with better material than they have right now. Meanwhile all you can do is keep writing.

What do you love about writing?

Those moments when what you're trying to say links up with a pleasing-sounding way of saying it. The surprises that come in writing something out, the way it can clarify a nebulous conception, or drop a lesson in your lap you didn't know was there, even if it's just something about how you felt or what you missed at the time.

What frustrates you about writing?

I've worked in a pretty demanding industry for over 30 years now, where a 12-hour day is about the shortest workday you can hope for, so my frustrations over writing were all about not getting to do it when I wanted to. I hope a few years down the line to do nothing but write, and then I'll probably have a better answer for this question, because up to now I haven't had time to get frustrated with writing.

What about writing surprises you?

That you can do it for your entire life and it holds interest. That I still want to do it. I will say that for the most part when I'm starting a film job or getting close to that first day of filming, there's something in me that can't believe I'm going through the process again, the endless rides in vans to find locations, the negotiations with agents and managers and cast and crew, the money struggles, the long hours, the overnight work, the weather problems, the human problems, and I wish I were just once and for all done with it. That doesn't happen with writing. Or hasn't yet.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I wish I had a writing routine, but I work long and weird hours, almost never at home, so my laptop is my only anchor, really.

I didn't have that steady, regular writing-time routine that I read about (and envied) when writers talked about their regimens. With Covid—and no film production—I suddenly had all the time I thought I wanted and found it hard to sit down for even an hour or two a day. I had to build up to it. And by the time I got used to it, work started up again, and I was back to the half hour a day if I was lucky, and an hour or two every Saturday and Sunday. But I had a good start on the book and over the following two years got through a draft I was ready to send out.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I work in what's considered a creative industry, and sometimes it is, and sometimes what I do contributes to that, and I have had pockets of satisfaction in that way.

Reading is certainly supportive of the process. Thinking about what you're reading—in my case sometimes writing about what I'm reading—does get me to think about the effects of style and structure and all the rest on the success a piece of writing has. That certainly feels like it has a benefit.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I have two more chunks of my film career, quite distinct, that I plan on covering, one book each. I've written the first few chapters of the next one, which covers a stretch of time when I worked almost exclusively on mainstream Hollywood features—decent budgets, big stars, big personalities, some of them grand critical or financial successes. And then there's my current job, The White Lotus, another hit series but this time one that I'm about as close to the core of as someone who's not Mike White, the show's creator, writer and director, could be. Mike knows about this plan, otherwise I wouldn't talk about it. Mike is the ideal boss, and it's the craziest job, where you travel to dreamy places and spend time at the best hotels in the world, and that's your workplace for most of a year. And then you do it again and again. It feels like it deserves its own book.

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Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.