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I do go obviously to restaurants and travel all over the country, and I hear people talking,
and I hear the conversation, but I never say, “Hmm, that would be interesting to use one
day.” Never. That never happens. First of all, I couldn’t write a play about Texas.
I mean I wouldn’t know how they talk. I don’t know how they’re brought up. I only
learned it through the movies as we all do. That’s why Tennessee Williams writes his
plays about the South. Basically William Inge wrote, basically, from where he comes form.
I still write basically about New York. I’ve written about London; I’ve written about
California, but I’m still a New York playwright, basically. ) When I wrote Star Spangled Girl,
a play that was not a big favorite of mine, I wrote it about San Francisco – a city
I had never been in. I can’t write about a city I’ve never been in, because I don’t
know when they leave the door what restaurant do they go to, where do they go to school,
where do they buy their groceries? I don’t know anything about them. So I wrote it, and
I couldn’t capture it. If I wrote that same play and set it in New York, it would have
been a better play. It wouldn't have been a great play, but it would have been much
better, because I would’ve known more about them. And so I don’t write about places
I don’t know about.