delaney

BRISTOL — When Edward J. Delaney decided to make a documentary, he chose a subject that he knew well, but only from the printed page.

The late Andre Dubus’ stories had fascinated Delaney, a journalist and author who teaches at Roger Williams University, and strongly influenced his own writing.

He knew about Dubus’ graceful way with words and the hardscrabble lives he wrote about. He knew about Matt Fowler, the vengeful father in Killings, Ted Briggs, the injured Marine who appeared in a host of stories, and Rose, the downtrodden mother in the tale of the same name.

But over the course of making his film about Dubus, Delaney would realize that the life of the Massachusetts author was perhaps even more complicated than the characters in his renowned short stories. Dubus, who died in 1999, lived a life full of contradictions. He was religious yet hard-drinking, full of bravado yet burdened with despair.

The documentary, The Times Were Never So Bad: The Life of Andre Dubus, tells the story of a man who lived through turmoil. His sister was raped at a young age, and Dubus, fearing for his loved ones’ safety, carried a gun for many years. He was married and divorced three times, had six children, and was crippled in a car accident at age 49.

“I think Andre’s life was a tragedy,” author James Lee Burke, Dubus’ cousin, says in the film.

Delaney, who is a professor in the communication department at Roger Williams University, recently talked about his writing career and the making of the film which premieres tomorrow at the Rhode Island International Film Festival in Providence.

A Providence resident, Delaney is a former newspaper reporter who grew frustrated with the restrictions of newspapers.

“You write all these stories in a given week, and you think, ‘If only I had more time,’ ” Delaney said.

Fiction was a means to explore some of the themes he came across in journalism. The Drowning, a story published in The Atlantic Monthly, had its roots in an article Delaney wrote for the now-defunct Sunday Journal Magazine.

The idea was to follow a Catholic priest around to get a sense of the business of religion. But Delaney grew fixated on a question: What does a priest do if someone in confession tells him about a crime? It had little to do with the article, but it became the basis of The Drowning, which was included in Best American Short Stories 2005.

Delaney had been interested in film since his time at Boston University in the 1980s, but the cost of making a movie in those pre-digital days was prohibitive. It wasn’t until the past few years that Delaney seriously considered a documentary.

He toyed with the idea of doing something on Jeffrey Scott Hornoff, the former Warwick police detective who was wrongfully convicted of murder. Delaney dropped the idea after Hornoff’s story was told in another film.

In 2005, Delaney was awarded the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for his novel Warp and Weft. At a ceremony that April, Dubus’ son, Andre Dubus III, presented Delaney with the award.

Something clicked for Delaney at that moment. When Delaney first started writing fiction, he used Dubus’ style as a model. Here was a chance for Delaney to combine his interest in film with his love of literature.

“I decided there was a nice full circle to this,” Delaney said.

After Andre Dubus III — himself the author of an acclaimed novel, House of Sand and Fog — gave permission to do the film, Delaney bought a $6,000 high-definition video camera, and started work.

The bulk of the research was done over six weeks in August and September of last year when Delaney interviewed Dubus’ family members, students and authors Burke, Richard Russo and Tobias Wolf, all close associates of Dubus.

Delaney’s 80-minute film follows Dubus from his childhood in Louisiana, where he first started writing, through a stint in the Marines and on to studies at the University of Iowa. He moved to Haverhill, Mass., where he taught at Bradford College and wrote a series of award-winning collections of short stories.

But Delaney opens the movie with the accident that would leave Dubus in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In 1986, Dubus was driving home on Interstate 93 when he pulled over to aid two disabled motorists. An oncoming car struck them. One person was killed, and Dubus lost his left leg.

“The accident was the turning point in his life,” Delaney said. “In many ways it was like one of his stories.”

Afterward, Dubus wrote two books of essays that were well-received, and won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. The heightened appreciation for his work continued after his death in 1999 at age 62 from a heart attack. Two movies based on his fiction were made — In the Bedroom and We Don’t Live Here Anymore.

Joseph Hurka, an author and onetime student of Dubus’ who appears in the film, saw an early version of the documentary and calls it an accurate portrait of Dubus.

“I think it is an important piece of work,” he wrote in an e-mail. “That it is about Andre is a delight: it is as if we could have a slice of the life of Chekhov, seeing pictures of him and meeting his friends. It makes the great artist human and brings us closer to him.”

Despite Delaney’s admiration for Dubus’ work, the documentary presents all sides of the author’s life, the good and bad.

“I’m not a hero-worshiper,” Delaney said.

The Times Are Never So Bad: The Life of Andre Dubus will be screened at 2 p.m. tomorrow at the University of Rhode Island’s Feinstein Campus Theatre, 180 Washington St., Providence.

akuffner@projo.com