From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

My guest, Pat Kirkham, is, I would call her an archaeologist of the visual.

She's done books on people from Ray and Charles Eames, a terrific book on women designers,

1900 to 2000.

Her most recent book is Saul Bass, A Life in Film and Design.

She's sitting here with me right now.

The book is terrific.

And there's the parallel between

Saul Bass and the Eames, because he worked in film and the Eames worked in film as well.

Yes, quite a parallel. And in fact, I came from one project to the other, because when I was

working on the Eames book, no one was particularly interested in the Eames films in the 1980s.

The only person to write on those films before I was doing,

that was Paul Schrader.

The British Film Institute hardly had any.

And when I was telling film people what I was doing,

they just looked blank.

And then I would say, Paul Schroeder thought they were interesting.

They would say, oh, that's interesting.

You had to have a different film hook to get through to that.

But anyway, in some of the journals, there was a journal called Business Screen,

and there would be three couples mentioned,

...