The Bratters – Joshua, Samantha, and their son, Max – have long supported Miami Book Fair and have been attending even longer. A warm, outgoing, and close-knit literature- and film-loving family, they work together, too: Joshua helms his namesake Bratter PA law firm, Samantha is its COO, and until he left for law school earlier this summer, Max served as a legal research associate there. We recently sat down with all three of them to talk about why Book Fair is so important to them, both personally and as people who call Miami home.
Your family has sponsored specific MBF author sessions in the past, most recently Henry Winkler, Michael Imperioli with Blitz Bazawule, Roz Chast, and Malcolm Gladwell – were you able to meet any of those authors?
JB: We have, and it’s the essence of the Fair and of Miami itself, in some ways. A top-tier international showcase, with the oddly normalized opportunity to bump into and kibitz with luminaries in their fields.
MB: I was fully immersed in The Sopranos when I was asked to introduce Michael Imperioli for his session. I knew him as Christopher, his character on the show, and he was just beginning his untested role in The White Lotus series. He was flipping through books (backstage) and my dad and I just started an easy conversation with him about how much we loved his work – like starstruck fans – and he asked me what I thought of White Lotus. From there we just had a kind of flowing talk about his work.
JB: I loved him in Goodfellas and Spike Lee’s Clockers, and I asked him what it was like to work on those; he smiled that we knew so much about his career. And Malcom Gladwell – that was just being in the presence of the Outlier himself.
MB: It’s pretty amazing when they clear out the green room and you’re there and about to introduce someone who has shaped the way an entire generation thinks.
SB: Henry Winkler was the most personal for us. His manager said, “Mr. Winkler is coming in tight, no pictures, he’s going to just get on stage.” But when he arrived he walked up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Henry. You look like the mom of the group.” We then talked about everything from Max’s bar mitzvah to the super-cool sweater Winkler was wearing. He took selfies and then took Max’s camera and made a video that he narrated.
JB: Just another one of those intergenerational, connective moments at the Fair for our family. Sam and I grew up with “the Fonz” and Max and I loved him in Arrested Development. He was so authentic.
SB: For me, Roz Chast was life coming full circle – we all wait for her cartoons in The New Yorker! I grew up in Manhattan and she was a source of solace to me with her ironic, awkward world view. She was uncomfortable with all the attention at the Fair; the other panelists revered her.
You’re all as much into literature as you are into film. What’s the best book-to-screen adaptation you’ve seen?
MB: Apocalypse Now. I just read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and I am so amazed by how Francis Ford Coppola retold the narrative against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.
JB: It’s hard to appreciate the surreal vision that Coppola used to tell that story, which is generally classified as a war or Vietnam film but is so much more. As we as viewers go down that river, you follow the characters as they descend into madness and terror, like the war itself. Dennis Hopper freestyling the hollow men is so unexpected. I would also add No Country for Old Men. That the Coen brothers could tell such a linear narrative so detached from their absurdist tone and introduce Javier Bardem as an even more terrifying Anton Chigurh – one of the great villains of all time – was extraordinary.
SB: Like Water for Chocolate is my favorite. I studied it for my thesis in college, when I was already engaged to Josh. His mother, a culinary magician, had begun to teach me how to cook and how to love food, and how to love your family through food. The film was so faithful to the book and so achingly beautiful.
What’s the last great book you read? Are you reading anything good right now?
MB: I’ve been living away from Miami for the past seven years and am now relearning the culture behind the city. I just read and loved Miami by Joan Didion.
JB: All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby, a Southern noir steeped in so many interconnecting themes and genres that you can almost see the film adaptation as you’re reading it.
SB: I’m reading Greek mythology, again. I go back to it to find meaning in the things around me that make no sense. There’s a lot of that right now.
If you could have a one-on-one lunch with any author, living or dead, who would they be and what would you ask them?
JB: Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine master of the short story – is the aleph real?
SB: Elie Wiesel, as the world needs his soulful global voice of reason, with all its compassion and brilliance, more than ever. And if privileged to be at lunch with him, I would just listen.
MB: Sarah Wynn-Williams. How do you have any sense of privacy in this world anymore?
Interview by Elisa Chemayne Agostinho; responses have been edited for space and clarity.
