Muldoon Interview with Daniel and David Facchini
“Dan adds the fact; I add the color.” David Facchini says with a laugh, in describing the symbiotic working relationship that he has with his brother Dan when they put together the book, Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story, with their father, Rocco Facchini. On top of the fact that they are brothers, which creates a whole ‘nother layer of human dynamics, “The creative process and the learning process of how people work is different, you know. Dan works very linearly and I work outwardly.”
Dan, who co-wrote the book, explained his father’s particular aversion to using a machine to record his thoughts. “He wanted nothing to do with a tape recorder. Didn’t want to record himself talking. He couldn’t find his train of thought that way. He said that if he started writing it would start flowing.” Interesting point to ponder when you understand that this all started as an oral tradition of Rocco Facchini regaling his sons and their friends with Muldoon ghost stories, especially around Halloween.
The book was four years in the making, from 1999 to 2003. “There was a lot of road blocks that came up but we got over them.”
Of utmost importance to their father was that “He wanted it to be very accessible, very easy to read…He had some priorities on how we laid it out and put it down.” He wanted it to reach as many people as possible just as the Reverend Peter James Muldoon had touched many, in life or in spirit. Dan relates a discussion he had with Ursula Bielski, Chicago ghost expert, and she pointed out to Dan the uniqueness of Muldoon’s manifestations:
Usually you would hear about one or two people who would have a similar take on the story of the history of the ghost whereas my father experienced the ghost of Muldoon along with other people and that it affected a lot of people which is very unique.
David put in many hours at the Harold Washington library to help his father to research and pull out the details of events occurring around the time that Reverend Muldoon spent time at Saint Charles Borromeo. In fact, it was the research into Muldoon that made the story much more interesting. According to Dan,
We would ask as kids, “Who was Muldoon?” He didn’t have an answer to that until he researched it later on in life. And then he found out about this scandal and then he was like, “Wow, now this makes sense why he was haunting the church.” We always thought it was because his ring never made it back or that he wasn’t buried in the tomb [at Saint Charles Borromeo]. But really there was a scandal surrounding his life.
And using the wealth of background information they were able to gather from their research, they were able to flesh out the historical context of the Muldoon stories onto paper and make it much more than just another ghost story. David states that his father was the man to do it:
My dad was a historian, an educated man and he was a priest and he was put into this situation where only he could tell this story…In that moment no one else in history could do that other than my dad and he had the best way to tell the story from all different angles.
A family friend, Fred Schwartz, also asserted that, “To have a story to write was the big thing.” And Rocco Facchini, Schwartz stated, had stories to tell. David recalled conversations with people who remembered his stories:
He was a preacher so he would have to tell one new story a week and probably a few whenever he had to give a homily. And he was always connecting values with lessons even when we were growing up he would tell us the Muldoon stories.
The brothers are looking to adapt the book into a screenplay for a movie or possibly even a theater production. The near unanimous reaction from people who have read it, says David, is, “Oh my gosh, this would make such a good movie!”
The first step should probably be a title change which focuses more on the human aspects and less on the otherworldy. And there lies the crux of their dilemma. In Dan’s words,
I think that part of the problem is that when you hear the title, “a true Chicago ghost story”, it absolutely is but it’s not going to be like Halloween. It’s a different type of ghost story. It’s not suppose to scare the socks off of you. It’s not a horror story. I think that’s part of the challenge in making it saleable.
Having “ghost story” in the subtitle is a good hook that attracts the thrill-seekers who are looking for a good scare, but Muldoon is more than just a ghost story. As a ghost story, Muldoon does have a ghost that is bound to haunt a location. As Dan stated about his father, “He felt obligated to write this book at a certain point, after doing his research to help set the spirit of Muldoon free and rectify history and set the record straight.”
But you also get the sense of another mission that Rocco Facchini set out to accomplish. David spoke about the arc of the story, starting with the young Rocco setting out to do good unto others at his new post at Saint Charles Borromeo and returns with Reverend William A. Schumacher’s piece “On Loving the Poor.”
It’s like even through that whole journey, he still goes back to that first mission statement, his initial intention and his initial desire of going and helping and loving the poor. No matter what happens in the course of the history, that is still the mission statement.
For the brothers, the book has allowed them to take down the details of the stories, to save the memories in a more permanent repository, those stories that their father would entertain them with when they were young. Going from an oral tradition of stories told around Halloween, to being put down on paper in long-hand and transcribed to a book, plans for a movie would bring it full circle back to its more oral roots where the stories will be enacted and told in performance. In the end, the intent is to correct the mistakes of the past and as David surmises was his father’s intent,
He believed that he was the only person left who was ever going to be able tell the story and he didn’t want the story to die.
– Thùy Ngô
On July 26, 1896 the cornerstone of Saint Charles Borromeo was laid down. Where Saint Charles Borromeo once stood (torn down in 1969) now stands Cook County General Hospital. And no, I can’t bring myself to say the other name.
Please check out Justin Sengstock’s book review of Muldoon, here, for more details.
The book is not the only project for the brother’s collaborative work. Their sketch-comedy production company is *Creepy Hug. The images are generously submitted by David Facchini, who compiled and created the photos and images for the book, for inclusion in the blog piece.
Dan, Rocco and David Facchini
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Tags: *Creepy Hug, collaboration, Daniel J. Facchini, David R. Facchini, interview, Lake Claremont Press, Peter James Muldoon, Printers' Ball 2010 Blog-Down, Rocco A. Facchini, Saint Charles Borromeo, storytelling
July 27th, 2010 at 9:45 am
I had the pleasure of knowing Rocco and he was quite a man…he was passionate about faith and the overall goodness of people. This book is a testament to what Rocco believed about right and wrong. The writing of the book by Rocco, Dan, and David showcased the strong family bond that the Facchini family has always shared. Good review of a very special book!