The following excerpts are from an interview that was conducted by Marilyn Scott from Televu Mag. Sadly, the piece was never presented.

Part One:

Mar: For this week’s Televue Mag’s Review I interviewed published author Stanley G. Phillips, Jr.

Stan: Don’t forget to add future Screen and Television writer to your open.

Mar: That's important to you, more than being an novelist? Even before during our pre-interview your answers to my questions primarily pertained to the magic of films.

Stan: Other than Reign of Valor and to a lesser extent Cry of Liberty all my stories were first screenplays that I wrote then they became novels.

Mar: And why is that?

Stan: Well, simply I've found one media helps the other to expand its boarder. I find screenplays more enjoyable to write so that's how an idea is born. As I write a screenplay, especially an initial script, other than the dialogue the works are pretty much cut and dry - uncluttered, with a minimum amount of direction for the actors. As for the novels they're written from my actual notes, descriptions and such that I couldn't put into the screenplays. Because of that I suppose that's why I'm often told that my novels read somewhat like movie treatments.

Mar: I can't place your accent. Where were you raised?

Stan: While growing up I lived in many places across America and Canada. I attended over twenty schools.

Mar: How's that possible? What was your shortest stay in any one school?

Stan: I attended a school in Fargo, North Dakota, for one day.

Mar: Cold...

Stan: Beautiful...but, of course we got out of there before the snow began to fall.

Mar: And, what moved south for the winter?

Stan: Hardly, we moved to a trailer park in St. Cloud, Minnesota and stayed there for the winter.

to be continued:

Part Two:

Mar: Looking over some of your works it's truly remarkable the range of genres you cover. The ideas for your stories, where do they come from?

Stan: Often they come from being alone with my thoughts. Even early on, I pretty much knew some of the stories I wanted to write and what I wanted to convey in them. Up to now, I've been very true to my beliefs.

Mar: How's that?

Stan: Everyone I've known, almost everyone that is, has had some hand into making me who I am and how I write. I'm reminded of a summer's hike along the Spur in Bay Shore, Long Island.

Mar: You were alone that day?

Stan: For a while, yes. When I started out I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts. During the time I was alone, I would from time to time come up with an idea and stop long enough to jot down a title and a brief description of the storyline.

Mar: But?

Stan: About a mile from the mall, I met a man who was the spitting image of an old James Baskett, the man that played Uncle Remus in the "Song of the South".

Mar: What did you do?

Stan: Well, I wanted to continue writing. But, not wanting to be rude I kept pace with Uncle Remus and to this day I'm glad that i had.

Mar: What did you and Uncle Remus talk about?

Stan: I mostly listened and nodded from time to time.

Mar: What did he talk about then?

Stan: He confirmed everything that I believe in to this very day...regarding the quality of life and how it was changing and not for the good...how people are always in a rush and not having time to enjoy one another, or what was going on around them...like nature and life itself.

Mar: So, the stories were just a prelude to meeting Uncle Remus?

Stan: Yeah, yeah...but, I did write a few of those stories, besides others. But, it's funny how story ideas come about. They can come out of times of desperation, lonilness and even fear (as well as good times).

Mar: And, not to mention long walks on some road on Long Island.

Stan: I remember the time I came up with the various chapter's of "Helping Hands".

Mar: Along some deserted road?

Stan: (grins) No...I was on an airplane that looked like it was going to crash...people were crying. Smoke was coming up through the floor boards.

to be continued:

Part Three

Stan – The small prop plane I was in was preparing to land at Logan. It was raining pretty hard. The plane was being tossed by the storm. Instead of climbing above the storm, I guess under the circumstances the pilot thought it best to begin the approach as quickly as possible (people were crying…smoke was coming through the floorboards).

Part Four

Mar – I’m afraid to ask…you went into the hospital?

Stan – Yes…an emergency landed me on my back. (cleared throat) When I arrived at the hospital I was informed that there were no regular rooms available. However, an hour later, after my doctor convinced the hospital how seriously ill I was they gave a bed…in the geriatric ward.

Mar – But you’re a young man.

Stan – Yeah…but, that doesn’t and shouldn’t matter in the case of an emergency…as for me, I really didn’t want to complain under the circumstances. There were four beds in the room…and, seeing I needed one. 

Mar – Well, you recovered. And, you wrote Helping Hands.

Stan – (long pause)

Mar – What?

Stan – Laying in a bed within a geriatric ward, you quickly come to grips with one’s mortality…in fact, the idea for one of the chapters in Helping Hands came from that stay.

Mar - Yes…the understanding how fragile life really is.  M-m-m-m.

Stan - I’m still very taken whenever I think of the meeting of several dear men that were patients in the room with me. I especially marvel over the care the orderlies, nurses, and the doctors provided for those men and me. It was wonderful and so were my roommates.

Mar – A memorable stay.

Stan – (strained) Yes…and no…and no, partly for a reason you might not consider.  M-m-m-m.

To be continued:

Part Five

Stan - Like I said I enjoyed my company...but I was in a hospital. If that wasn't bad enough, I was given nothing to eat except Jello for my first two days there. They wouldn't let me get out of bed until the third day. And, besides being made a human pin-cushion it was the middle of summer, it was about 100 degrees in our room as the hospital's A/C system was broken.

Mar - (laughs) What did you do?

Stan - What could I do? I was being held captive in a place with no substantial food, where a little lady failed numerous times to  attach a line into one of my veins and several old men and I were slowly being suffocated...no A/C, windows that could not be opened in the middle of a heatwave.  I got better.

Mar - I can't believe everything that's happened to you.

Stan - Of course you understand that everything that's happened to me is directed related to the course that I choose to take...during periods in my life, my emotionally state at a given time, the locality that I found myself in. Take for example the summer I was a member of the Indianapolis Clowns, a traveling semi-pro baseball show team.

Mar - You played in the Negro Leagues...but?

Stan - No...I didn't play in the Negro leagues...by the time I was with them the Negro Leagues had been disbanded for many years and had become intergrated. Thus, they allowed anyone to tryout for the team. That's where much of the story of Here Comes the Clowns comes from.

Mar - I read the short story...and, I loved it.

Stan - There's a lot more to the saga. (laughs) Someday, either I or someone will have to write the story. (Here Come The Clowns has since been written.)

Mar - Why don't you fill our readers in about the small chapel along dirt road? )The story of the small chapel is presented in Here Comes the Clowns)

Part Six

Stan: It happened while I was traveling and playing with the Clowns. (pause) The season was coming to an end and was my hope of ever playing professional baseball.

Mar: That must have been very low point in your life?

Stan: During times like that most look for guidance if not to be consoled. As I am accustomed in doing I took a long walk to be alone with my thoughts...After about an h our I found myself on a deserted road that twisted up a large hill lined with large pine trees.

Mar: A perfect spot.

Stan: Oh, well, yeah...you could say that. I went in and I was somewhat surprised by the actual size of the building. I had kind of expected to find a building that actually stretched back far into the woods. But, to my SURPRISE the building, in fact the room was a sixteen by sixteen foot square.

Mar: The room, or the building had furniture?

Stan: ...Yes, there were a couple of short rows of folding chairs that faced a small wood framed podium that looked toward the doorway where I stood. No one was in the building/room. Under normal circumstances I might have left right then and there, if not for a small wooden cross that was hanging on the wall behind the podium. Seeing the cross I figured it was as good a place as any to rest and to be alone with my thoughts.

Mar: All alone...

Stan: Of course after reading the short story you know what's happens next. No sooner had I settled in a chair in the corner of the room, a pastor entered. He was surprised to see me sitting there. But, he didn't say a word to me. A moment later, what I would later learned to be a family came in...a middle-aged man and woman, and a young man assisting an elderly woman to a seat. 

Mar: (slowly shakes her head, snickering)

Stan: The family took their seats...each from time to time would stare back at me wondering who I was. After the pasture said a few words of solace, he asked if anyone wanted to say a few words about the good man...brother and husband and father that had passed away.

Mar: Whatever did you do?

Stan: What would you do? After a few moments and great deliberation I took the only fitting action opened to me.

Mar: What did you say before you left?

Stan: (pause) Let me conclude that little story by assuring you it was only through the exuberance of youth that I often found myself in such situations.

Part Seven: The final part.

Mar: Now, Reign of Valor tell me where you got the idea?

Stan: It's the first story I ever came up with. It was one of the stories ideas that came to me that summer's day I met Uncle Remus. Although the piece is my favorite story I've written, the novel was the most taxing.

Mar: Is it due to the way you introduced your characters?

Stan: Some what...but, I think the real difficulty came about due to the way I wrote the book and not so much the characters themselves. Reign of valor took me a long time to write...years in fact as the novel never seemed finished until now. And, that's because I kept adding characters that told the story in their own words and i had to carefully weave them throughout the novel.

Mar: Of course you started with Martin?

Stan: Yes...Martin as a small boy. However, Martin as the grow man came years later when I added the literary agent. Ben Talbot came next and finally the Mr and Mrs Jamison.

Mar: The Jamisons, or Ma and Pa as you at times in your book call them...they call to mind, as least to me, two prominent Texas governors of the past.

Stan: In Reign of Valor I deal with three periods, 1836 Texas' fight for Independence; 1928  prior to the great depression, and the present time. In each period I needed a focal point for the reader to identify the period with. 1836 was simple enough as there were so many heroes. Ferguson, or Jamison as I named him was a former Texas Governor with a somewhat dubious past and his wife as it happens also became a governor of Texas. Jamison began an important as he was also a banker...and he warned that all the unwise loans that the banks were giving out would lead to a Great Depression. He warned that in 1928, that the foreign goods that were flooding our land and they were a lot cheaper than our goods was destroying our economy. And, with him being a banker it was a way for me have Bandridge the movie director to ask for badly needed funds to make his movie about the Alamo. As for the present time, the literary agent fit the bill perfectly as he would be the driving force to tell the tale and to put everything together about the Martin's tale,  about the Alamo and the missing 1928 Silent Movie Crew that disappeared while filming on location in the remote part of Texas.

Mar: I read Reign of Valor and I truly enjoyed every page...I didn't think I would, but it's much more than a book about time travel.

Stan: I feel that it is...as I believe that everything we do lasts forever, or what would be the reason for our existence. What we leave behind has to be a testament that we once existed.  And, that's not to say that you have to be rich; but it have a lot to say about who we are and how we live and treat people around us. As for the event of Time Travel being possible there has to be a way to explain the sudden unexplained sensation of feeling some long departed loved one being near. Just take a moment and consider how many people both alive and dead have walked along some road anywhere in the world...I think it's a good possibility that times might cross even if it's only momentarily.

Mar: In closing...

Stan: What already...the night's so young?

Mar: In twenty-five words or less...

Stan: Twenty-five words or less...that's like some job interviewer asking you where do you see yourself in ten years? I want to be president, what do they think? But, today I'll take anything just to work as I'm more concerned with today than ten years from now.

Mar: Can you...

Stan: I'll give it a go. Reign of Valor is about a young boy's dream that transports a 1928 silent movie crew back to 1836 and into Texas' fight for Independence. How did I do?

Mar: You did fine. Thank you.