ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 18, 1996 TAG: 9607180011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS
SOURCE: JUDI TULL DAILY PRESS
By mid-morning, the sun and humidity were relentless, wilting even the hardiest soul.
Just the way author William Styron remembers his hometown.
``It was the kind of southern morning when people, waking, stirred and whispered, `Oh, Jesus,''' he wrote in ``A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales From Youth.''
On a gravel road in front of the old C&O railroad station in downtown Newport News, Styron waited patiently while a film crew adjusted lenses, lights and sound equipment.
Dressed in a long-sleeved, pale pink, checked shirt, pale olive trousers and brown shoes with thick soles, his silver hair not yet closely shorn for his usual summer cut, he spoke when director Variety Moszynski gave him his cue.
``This station is where it all began,'' he said as he stared into the lens of the camera.
The station, once bustling, is where his first novel,``Lie Down in Darkness,'' opens with the body of Peyton Loftis coming home. The city is where it began for Styron, who has gone from his youth in Hilton Village to world renown as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Styron was in Hampton Roads last month for the filming of portions of two documentaries about him and his work. Filming began a week before, at his 71st birthday party, at his home in Roxbury, Conn.
The films are joint ventures between American and French production companies under the auspices of the New York Center for Visual History. The one-hour American version, which will focus on Styron's work and its impact on other artists, will air in December on PBS. The French version will be more biographical in tone and will run for 45 minutes, said producer Claire Patry.
The French have been particularly good to Styron, receiving his work warmly and giving ``A Tidewater Morning,'' his trilogy of short pieces, a long-standing place on the bestseller list.
At home, he has not always been so warmly received.
``Lie Down in Darkness'' was set in a town he called Port Warwick, a barely disguised Newport News. The book sold well but was received locally with mixed feelings, since many characters were drawn from life and their infidelities, resentments and darker sides were all revealed, he recalled.
``There was pride about my work, but also a feeling that the author might have transgressed,'' he said.
Styron and Rose, his wife of 42 years, arrived in town with a film crew of eight. The crew filmed Styron in Hilton Village and at the Hilton pier.
Assistant producer Cynthia Griffin, who initiated the project and is a neighbor and friend of the Styrons, said she immediately noticed a familiarity about the water's-edge setting at the pier. Looking from the pier back toward Hilton Elementary School, she said, the view is almost identical to the one at the Styrons' Martha's Vineyard home.
``I have pictures of both of them. You could almost superimpose them over one another,'' she said.
After shooting wrapped up in Newport News, the crew headed for Smithfield. Styron wanted to see to it that everyone had a chance to taste Smithfield ham, a culinary favorite he has had delivered to him all over the world.
Styron ordered clams on the half shell and a plate of Smithfield ham and fried chicken. ``If you pay too much attention to your health, you'll live to be 100 but you'll be an ill-tempered old man,'' he rationalized with a smile.
Over lunch, Styron said he had few regrets as he looked back over his career. ``I am satisfied with the work,'' he said. ``I just wish I'd written more.''
Later, the crew headed to Southampton County to revisit the site of Nat Turner's rebellion, the subject that won Styron the 1967 Pulitzer for ``The Confessions of Nat Turner.'' He had not visited there in 30 years.
Although Rose Styron said that her husband is working on some short pieces and ``a long novel that he keeps working at,'' the writer was quiet about his work.
``No,'' he said when asked about something new. ``Nothing right now. If there's something that's coming, I'll let you know.'
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Novelist and Newport News native William Styron recentlyby CNBwas interviewed for a documentary at the Tidewater city's old train
station.|< AP