I'm in the office of my house in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Allegedly I'm working on a new manuscript which will feature characters first introduced in my upcoming novel, Right as Rain, to be published in the UK by Orion in early 2001.
2.What age did you get your first book published, and was it always an ambition of yours to be a published author, or did it you fall in to it? I read that you had a string of run of the mill jobs beforehand.
I worked a series of blue-collar jobs until I decided to try my hand at writing a novel at thirty-two. The book was published when I was thirty-four. I've known from childhood that I wanted to make my living telling stories, but had no clue as to how I was going to go about it. Actually, my first love was film. But the film business seemed to be an impenetrable wall, especially for someone as unconnected as I was. So I decided to write a novel instead. The idea being that novel-writing was a more egalitarian profession, and it would be an "easier" way to get in. Of course, there was nothing easy about writing a novel, nor was it easy to gain entrance to the clubbish world of writers, publishers, and agents. But in my ignorance I gave it a try, and nine novels later, here I am.
3.Is it true that you were instrumental in bringing the films of John Woo to the U.S? If so please elaborate.
I went to work for Circle Releasing, owned by Jim and Ted Pedas, in 1990, after I learned that they had bought John Woo's film The Killer for US distribution. I had seen it in a Hong Kong Film Festival and was blown away. Because of circumstances, soon afterwards they decided to shut down the company, but I asked them to let me stay on and distribute the film myself. They graciously agreed. I designed the one-sheets, created the tag-line for the film, booked it, moved the prints around the country, and chased the money from the exhibitors. The critics in the US didn't understand the film, and it was mostly rejected by arthouse audiences, but it caught the attention of the studios and Mr. Woo was on his way.
4.I have always thought that writing a book would provide a way to exact revenge on, or compliment real people from your own life, by making them in to characters in the book. Is that something you do yourself?
Sure. Many of the characters--the good, the bad and the ugly--who appear in my books have walked through my life in one way or the other. There's plenty of me in my protagonists as well.
5.Please tell us something about the film' Undertow' and your involvement in the film industry.
I think your talking about the film Caught (Undertow was an early title). After Circle Releasing finally did close down, I produced three films with the Pedas Brothers under the Circle Films moniker: Caught, Whatever, and Blackmale (we're big on one-word titles). The Pedas Brothers had previously produced three of the Coen Brothers films, for which I frequently and erroneously am credited. I left Circle a year ago, as I was getting steady work as a screenwriter. I now divide my time as a novelist and working screenwriter.
6.It must take a great deal of self discipline to be a writer, not to lose heart midway through a book or be distracted. Do you have to be in a certain environment to write, listen to certain records, perhaps have a mountain of coffee to hand. Or could you write on the bus, or on a park bench, wherever?
I can only write in my office, located in the attic of my house. It's cramped, no atmosphere, with only a slight view to the street below. Like being in a tunnel--no distractions. I write in the mornings, fueled by plenty of coffee, sometimes listening to music and sometimes in silence. Whatever works. It eat a late lunch and I'm done for the day, as a well-fed mind is a dull mind. It's always a head-fuck, trying to write a book. It's easy to lose heart at any point and give in to self-doubt. And since I don't outline I never know where the damn thing is headed. But you get to a point where the characters you've created begin to write the book, and that's when it's most enjoyable. That's when you really start to smoke.
7.The Sweet Forever is loaded with musical references. You must be big on your music. Do you collect and file everything Hi Fidelity style?
My vinyl is racked behind my desk, alphabetically. My cds are arranged by type: slo-jams, soundtracks, soul and funk, low-fi, hard rock, punk, metal, country, etc. It's all just a grab away.
8.You come up with such colourful inventive names for your characters, Eddie Golden, Short Man Munroe, Dimitri Karras, are they real names or have you made them up? I think the distinctive names help you to keep track of the characters.
In D.C. most everyone has a street name, so the names I encounter day-to-day are not any more outrageous than the ones I make up. The obituaries are a great source of names.
9.When I first read The Sweet Forever I felt bombarded with characters in the first couple of chapters, and I was worried I would lose track. But a bit further in and they start to tie together and you care what happens to them. How can you make sure people empathise with or hate a character?
Make them all human. Give none of them short shrift, including and especially the minor characters.
10. Do you have an idea in advance of a characters fate? Or do you decide as you write?
The characters themselves decide their fate. I know, it sounds pseudo-mystical, but any writer worth a damn, any writer who's not a hack, will tell you the same thing.
11.What do you feel Tarantino has done for the crime film genre? Would you let him direct a film version of one of your books?
Tarentino has come up with a hybrid of genre elements (all genres, not just crime) that is very entertaining. He's a clever guy whose strength lies in the musicality of his dialogue. He needs to watch his use of the word "nigger," though. Nobody should use it as indiscriminately as he does, and from the interviews he's given he doesn't seem to accept the fact that what he's doing is hurtful, disrespectful, and problematic. It's one thing to use the word (as I have done, admittedly) when it would be used by ignorant characters, and quite another to use it because it sounds "street." I did like Jackie Brown, because it was the first film he made that contained recognizable human characters. As for letting him direct a movie based on one of my books, it doesn't really work that way. Once you sell the rights to your book it's pretty much out of your hands. He's a talented director, so naturally I would keep an open mind if we had the opportunity to work together. But he really does need to rethink some of the decisions he's made in the past. Just because a bunch of a college-age, privileged white boys laugh at your "nigger" jokes, it doesn't mean they're funny.
12. Finally the question we ask everyone, please give one piece of advice to readers of the Flashing Hobo.
Well, if you're looking to be a writer, don't be in too much of a hurry. I mean, it's a long life. Read a whole lot, and try to do some living as well. Reading voraciously is absolutely how you "learn" to write. Life experience gives you something to write about. Anyway, that's how it worked for me.
Cheers George. As you can probably tell I have only read The Sweet Forever as I was only very recently introduced to your work through a guy at work. But I have a copy of King Suckerman in front of me which I'm looking forward to reading. I thought the sweet forever was a great read with a real human touch! And I have personally forced at least two of my friends to buy it!
Cheers, man. Thanks