Charles Rzepka's Interview with Elmore Leonard: 3
Crimeculture is delighted to be able to offer substantial extracts from a series of interviews that Professor Charles Rzepka conducted with Elmore Leonard in 2009-10. This is the second extract. Click here to read the first of our extracts and here to read the second instalment.
Elmore Leonard is a crucial figure in any
consideration of the development of crime writing in the twentieth century, and
he is arguably, as Martin Amis suggests, the closest thing America has to “a
national novelist”. In a career
that spans sixty years, over forty novels and numerous screenplays and short
stories, he has established himself as the best-known crime fiction writer in
America and as so vigorous a creative presence that he transcends the
categories of popular generic fiction. When he was awarded USA PEN Lifetime Achievement award, PEN praised the
“distinct literary style” Leonard has created, suggesting that “books like Swag, LaBrava,
Freaky Deaky and Tishomingo Blues are not only classics of the crime genre, but
some of the best writing of the last half century.”
Charles Rzepka,
who is working on study of Elmore Leonard provisionally entitled Being Cool, has had the opportunity to
conduct many hours of interviews. Professor Rzepka has established a strong
reputation as a critic of crime and detective fiction. His Detective Fiction (Polity, 2005) offered a penetrating analysis of
the development of detective fiction in England and America from the eighteenth
century on; this was followed by co-editing (with Lee
Horsley) the Blackwell Companion to Crime
Fiction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). In 2009, towards the end of the period in which he was working
on the Blackwell Companion, he
approached Leonard for an interview and secured not one but a series of
meetings, with interviews ranging over the writer’s life and work in
extraordinary depth.
Elmore
Leonard Interview #3
In person in Bloomfield Village, MI 9/29/10 (edited for Crime Culture)
Some pages of Leonard’s
novel-in-progress, Djibouti, are on
his desk when I arrive. Leonard
begins by expressing his excitement at what he’s doing with the plot. His protagonist, the documentary film-maker Dara, and her assistant, Xavier, are filming and
interviewing pirates off the coast of Somalia. After some detailed discussion of the characters and events
of the novel, we turn to Leonard's early westerns.
CR: Could I ask a couple of questions about
your earliest work? Why
Indians? Your first western
stories are focused on Apaches, and Native Americans and aboriginal people seem
to come up again and again in your writings either directly or indirectly. You
mentioned Franklin de Dios, from Bandits,
who's obviously a really important character to you.
EL: In that book, yeah. Was that San Salvador or Nicaragua?
CR: That was Nicaragua, and he was a
Miskito Indian. And there’s Armand
Degas--I think he's one of the best conceived characters you've ever created--and others like Nester Soto, from Cat Chaser.
EL:
I like those guys.
CR:
What is that about?
EL: Well, because I can make them talk in
the present tense, for the most part. They know just enough English. Cundo Rey is the big one.
CR: So just the sound of their voices in
your head?
EL: Yeah.
CR: But why does that appeal to you?
EL: I don't know. I remember back in the '50s when I was writing westerns,
short stories for the most part, and my agent in New York said, "Please,
no border stuff. They don't want
Mexicans." And I was dying to
do the Mexicans in a lot of border stories.
CR: For the voices, and because the setting reminded you of For Whom the Bell Tolls? I think I
read somewhere that you thought the landscape was like Spain.
EL: Yeah, that's right. And I just thought those border stories
were good. But they wanted the
kind of stories that appeared in the Saturday
Evening Post, the serials. Like the movies starring Jimmy Stewart. He played a number of cowboy roles, and
I didn't think he was right at all. Cowboys were all young kids. But that's what the magazine wanted. That kind of “high plains” stories, not border stories. But I liked Apache Indians and
different tribes and they were all down in Arizona and New Mexico.
CR: But it couldn't have been just the
sound of their voices, was it?
EL: I didn't have Apaches talking that
much. They were something else to
deal with, but they were bad, as far as we were concerned, and they had their
own way of dressing with the band around their head. And they were always
stealing horses and raiding settlers, and so on, which they probably had every
right to do, but they're the bad guys in all the movies.
CR: Last time I was here you mentioned All
Quiet on the Western Front, which
was obviously one of your earliest literary influences, and at a very young
age, if you're talking about writing a play in 5th grade. That's really precocious.
EL:
Yeah, I was very influenced by that. I remember Slim Summerville in the movie eating beans and they were
happy, even though there were casualties, without saying they were happy
because of the casualties, because there were more cans of beans then for
them.
CR: Was there a special scene you were
trying to recreate?
EL: Yeah.
CR: Can you describe it?
EL: It seems to me it was the hero going
out, crawling under the desks, no man's land, and getting caught on the wire,
and he couldn't get out. And this
other guy, this coward, goes out and saves him. I hope it wasn't the other way around where he goes out and
saves the coward.
CR: You made me go back and read All
Quiet on the Western Front because you had talked about this coward. And the only one I found was the
corporal, Himmelstoss. Do you
remember him?
EL: No.
CR: He was this tight-assed little
martinette, back home when the recruits were being trained, and he liked to
bully them. But then they went to
the front and became hardened veterans. He got sent up after them, and they teased him and humiliated him and he
behaved like a coward. He had a
scratch on his chin and he pretended he was wounded so he’d be sent back
home. But then he redeems
himself. He goes out and brings
back the body of a friend of the guy telling the story, Paul. So since you had asked me, "Wasn't
there a coward in the play?" it made me think that Himmelstoss was somehow
important to you in your reading of All Quiet. You just said, "I hope it's not
the other way around." Why
did you say that?
EL: Because it's such a better story if the
coward goes out there to get him. I know that now, but did I know it then? That's what interests me.
CR: What made you think of
Himmelstoss? In all the episodes
to choose from, why was he an important character? It's as though he almost gave you the idea for the play.
EL: Well, it was probably Lou Ayers who
went out and got caught on the wire, and then the guy who rescued him, in my class, was Zenon La Joie. His uncle or something like
that was related to Napoleon La Joie, who for a long time was the best second
baseman in the majors. But this is
back in the ‘teens I think.
CR: So did Zenon La Joie play Himmelstoss?
EL: Maybe, I suppose. And everybody made fun of him. He always had ink around his
mouth. That was one reason why I
chose him, because everybody made fun of him.
CR: They sort of picked on him.
EL: Yeah, so this is like Himmelstoss,
yeah.
CR: So did they bully him?
EL: No, we didn't have real bullies in our
class. But the one black guy I
made a German because I didn't know what to do with him because I was just up
from Memphis. I didn't know any
black guys.
CR: Was this the first time you'd met a
black person, when you were in school with one?
EL: Oh definitely, definitely in school,
yeah. Leo Madison, Leo always had
a soggy looking sandwich. On the
outside you could see the jelly showing. Terrible looking sandwich, but he just sat there and ate them.
CR: Did the other kids pick on him?
EL: No.
CR: Were there any racist remarks?
EL: No. He was part of our group at school. At least he was around. He didn't have much to say,
though. But my friends who were in
the same class, I would see after school or on weekends and so on.
CR: But Zeh-non, is that how you pronounce
it? With the accent on the second syllable? Was he part of your group?
EL: No.
CR: But other kids in your group or in the
class would tease him because he was so odd?
EL: Yeah. He was always doing something with ink. We all had little bottles of ink in our
inkwells, and we had pens that we would dip in to write. It was very difficult.
CR: So when you first started writing were
you still using a pen that you would dip in ink?
EL: No.
CR: Just in school.
EL: Yeah.
CR: It's interesting that Zenon was eating
what you were writing with.
EL: Yes, isn't it?
CR: And got ink on his mouth.
EL: Well, it makes sense. [Himmelstoss] was
older—what did you say, he was
a corporal?
CR: He was. A lot of the boys knew each other from school and their
school teacher sort of brow-beat them into joining up to defend the Fatherland
and they all grew to hate him, of course, once they saw what war was really
like. But when they were first
being trained, Himmelstoss—he was the village butcher or something--would
make them do these sadistic things like stand at attention in subfreezing
weather without their gloves for half an hour, really horrible stuff.
EL: And made them clean up a big area with
brushes while it's snowing.
CR: Yeah exactly.
EL: I remember that.
CR: And I think just before they left for
the front they waylaid him, masked themselves so he wouldn't recognize
them. They beat him. They pulled his pants down and they
spanked him, or they beat him with a birch rod or something. And he apparently never found out who
did it., After they'd been at the front for several
months, he shows up, and he's a total greenhorn. He has no experience in combat, so his first reaction is to
hide and pretend to be wounded. It’s interesting that this struck you because Paul doesn't spend a lot
of time describing it in detail, just that Himmelstoss showed he could overcome
his cowardice by retrieving the body of his friend. [. . .]
EL: I don't know if I ever read the whole
book but I certainly remember his treatment of the troops before they went to
the front, and that's probably where I got it. But I saw the movie, of course, and then in '34 it was
serialized in the Detroit Times. And I remember lying on the floor
reading the paper, reading the story, but I'm sure I didn't read the whole
thing.
CR: Was this before you saw the movie or
after?
EL: After. I think it was after.
CR: So maybe the scene you're thinking of
is a scene in the movie version, not in the book.
EL: Maybe. But it's such a good idea that they get back at the guy who
was so tough on them. I think
that's what must’ve appealed to me,
CR: I want to get back to another person
you mentioned who was obviously important to you when you were an adolescent,
and that's Maurice Murray, the guy who hung off the roof. By the way, I also took the time to get
a DVD of the movie of The Big Bounce.
EL: The first one.
CR: The first one. And you're right. It is horrible. Just begin with the theme music.
EL:
I remember.
CR: It's sort of this weird hybridization
of Beach Boys and Mantovani Strings, and it’s so incongruous, it is so off key
for what is going on in the film that you can't take any of it seriously. And
Ryan O'Neal is completely wrong for Jack Ryan. He tries to look intimidating and comes off as a pool boy.
But I'm really fascinated by Maurice Murray. Can you tell me more about him?
EL: Oh, he was a year older than the rest
of us. I know when we were around
12 or 13 he was 14 and he was just slightly bigger but he wasn't a big
guy. And he was kind of quiet and
I can't hear him right now. My other
friends, the Boisineau boys, Gerard and Jackie Boisineau, they lived in the
apartment under the roof.
CR: So they were the other two--you said
there was like a gang of four?
EL: There were more than that. Phil Kozinski was
one of them, and his dad was a judge in Detroit and Gerard Boisineau was my
best friend. They lived two blocks
away from Blessed Sacrament, the school was right behind the cathedral, which
is still there but the schools are gone. There was the Cathedral, Catholic Central, and then this grade school,
and it went to the 12th grade for girls. Eighth grade, the boys had to go somewhere else.
CR: And that's when you went to the
University of Detroit High School.
EL: I went to Catholic Central first
because it was right there. Then
we moved, because we were living about a mile and a half south of there, toward
downtown in an apartment building. And then we moved out to North Lawn, which was one block away from U of
D High. And that was the best move
I ever made, to go to school there.
CR: But you knew Maurice before you left
for high school, is that right? You guys were still at Blessed Sacrament.
EL: Yeah, and then I don't know what
happened to him.
CR: Do you remember how you met? Was it just that you were both in class
together?
EL: Yeah.
CR: Did your families know each other?
EL: No. My family didn't know any of my friends' families.
CR: Why is that?
EL: Well, they lived so far apart and they
were also on a different social level, because my dad was an executive with
General Motors and Boisineau's dad was a construction worker. I remember Girard saying one time,
"My dad's making $300 a month now." Well, you know what that is.
CR: He was sort of proud of that.
EL: I mean, it wasn't bad then, but it
wasn't good. I don't know what
Maurice's dad did.
CR: So what else did you guys do besides
hang off the roof?
EL: Well, we had a big field where we would
play guns and somebody would have to go out and find the other ones who were
hidden and try and shoot them before he was shot. And then we played “hot cooloo,” also called “hot ass.” We played that on the street, on
Woodward Avenue, just a couple of blocks north of the Cathedral where somebody
would hide a belt--no, there was a belt involved but I don't know if it was
hidden--but at least one guy started out with the belt and had to find the
other guys and swat them with the belt before they got back to the goal.
CR: That's the “hot ass.”
EL: And “cooloo,” I don't know where that
came from.
CR: So it's like a version of hide and
seek, but with a really exaggerated tag.
EL: Yeah, which then I played later with my
kids but without the belt. We just
played guns, we'd hide somewhere in the house and then go and try and shoot
them before you're found, hunter and hunted.
CR: Have you ever played paintball?
EL: No.
CR: How are your kids right now? I remember last time we talked one of
them was working at an ad agency that was not doing well.
EL: Well, that agency folded and so now
Peter’s on his fourth book.
CR: Peter's the one who's decided to be a
writer.
EL: And he's written two books that
were--probably have one here--for . . . I can't think of the name of the
company. They did two and then he
gave them his third book, which was better. It was set in Rome where he went to school for a while, but
they let him go because evidently he wasn't selling the way they expected or
hoped. Which I think is the best
thing that's ever happened to us, because now his agent is going to take it to
other places. Now he's on his
fourth book, which is about a former Nazi concentration camp [guard], a real
heavy, real bad guy, but it takes place in the '70s, and he has designed a
Zeppelin, which is going to do something. I don't know what, I forgot.
CR: I hope it doesn't blow up.
EL: I hope not.
CR:
You have another son, is he still living in Tucson?
EL: Yeah.
CR: Who used to be in a mime troop?
EL: Mime, yeah. We all made fun of him
because it was so dumb. They
travelled around. Well, first they
started here [in Michigan] and his partner was a black guy and they travelled
around and put on all these little dumb skits.
CR: You sound like you were really
supportive.
EL: Oh, yeah.
CR: But he's over that now, is that right?
EL: Yeah. Well then he became a sommelier, and he took the test and he
went to the next step and then the restaurant closed. So now he's looking for work, but he's writing a book.
CR: He's writing a book too.
EL: Yeah, and he's been writing it now for
a year.
CR: So when all else fails, they know they
can write books.
EL: Yeah. They can, at least these two.
CR: Well, they've seen dad do it.
EL: Because I made it look easy. As Peter says--this is something he
wrote for publicity, "Boy You're On Your Way" is the name of it--he
said he'd come in and see me and I'd be sitting at the desk with my feet on the
desk with a T-shirt on that said--I've got to find it, ‘cause it’s good
[rummaging, then reading] “Elmore in Levis and sandals and a dark blue Nine
Inch Nails T-shirt talking enthusiastically about the opening scene of his new
book called ‘The Hot Kid.’ Watching my father I thought here's a guy who really loves what he's
doing and I didn't. Earlier that
afternoon, during my presentation, the VW ad manager had taken my first
campaign board and flung it like a Frisbee across the conference room, and I
thought that was our best idea,” and so on.
CR:
So that must have been a little upsetting to your son when that happened.
EL: Well yeah, I'm sure it was. He was upset. Or do you mean this time,
getting fired?
CR: That too.
EL: No, he's not upset at all. He's happy about it. They weren't doing anything for him,
nothing. And he's got Andrew
Wylie, my agent in New York, behind him. So he'll get going.
CR: That's good. That's a good start. [. . .]
EL: My dad had just finished the 6th grade
when his dad died in an accident, in a sugar plantation accident. Dad wanted me to go to Princeton and
become an engineer. I don't even know
if engineering is taught at Princeton. I doubt it. Some math, anyway. So he thought you needed that behind you to make it, because he was in
automotive, in General Motors, and that seemed like a good background to
him. And he was an artist. He was painting
pictures when his dad died and he had to quit doing that and go to work.
CR: His dad died when he was in 6th
grade. And he was a painter
already?
EL: Yeah, he was a painter. He was painting scenes around New
Orleans.
CR: Could I see the pictures? You said you have some.
EL: I'll show you one after awhile
upstairs.
CR: So he had to stop doing that.
EL: Yeah. And I guess finally, he had to go to work early and then he
took a correspondence course, and became an accountant. Then he went to Central America working
for one of the fruit companies as an accountant, and then came back to New
Orleans. During the war, World War
I, he joined and was made a 2nd Lieutenant, and then married my mother.
CR: Did he see combat?
EL: No, never left Louisiana or Texas or
wherever the camps were. He
married my mother in Galveston. And
that was it.
CR: Did you have a good close relationship
with your father?
EL: No, not with my father but with my
mother. My dad was travelling a
lot and he didn't read much. That
is, he read the paper and he read the Financial
Times, and he read Forbes and
those magazines, but didn't read what I was interested in. But my mother did and she joined the
Book of the Month Club in, like, 1940. She was trying to write too, but her stories were so old fashioned they
had no chance. Maybe in the '20s they
might've, but not in the '40s or '50s.
CR: Did she try getting them published?
EL: Yeah.
CR: But they just wouldn't take them.
EL: No.
CR: As you became more of a professional
writer yourself, how did you feel about her writing, what did you think of it?
EL: Well, I didn't think she had a chance,
but she certainly wanted to do it and she didn't have any guidance and she
couldn't find any guidance. She
couldn't find the kind of story graphs that she wanted to write, that she could
have written.
CR: Did she read to you when you were
young?
EL: No, my older sister did.
CR: So your mom was the one who really
encouraged your interest in books and writing and modeled that for you, I
guess. And your dad wanted you to
go to Princeton for engineering, but you've got that engineering gene, don't
you? I mean here in Djibouti you've got all this LNG tanker
stuff.
EL: Well, I don't understand any of
it. None of it.
CR: But you must at some level or you
wouldn't know how to put it into your books so persuasively.
EL: I mean that's what it is, it's a gas ship that could blow up.
CR: But you seem interested in this stuff.
EL: No. I make excuses. For instance: “You seen a gas ship blow up?” Xavier asks. “My information comes from dah-dah-dah,” says
Billy. “But you haven't,” Xavier
said, “actually seen an LNG gas ship set afire.” “Not yet.” So
if the information I’m using is wrong, there's a reason in the story—I
can blame the character.
CR: But I seem to recall reading somewhere
that you once had a private client as an free-lance
advertiser, you wrote gear shift ads for him and, from what I understand,
really enjoyed that.
EL: I enjoyed the idea that they would take
this car with this Hurst shifter and go out and street race because just before
I left Campbell-Ewald, Chevrolet was hot on the quarter mile track and I could
write those descriptions, with the right words and “power sliding” and stuff
like that.
CR: So it was the power of the drag racing
that you really seemed to enjoy. Can you describe your mom and dad's personalities or temperaments?
EL: My dad was dry, funny. When I was very young we had telling
time. He would sit down and then
I'd come in and sit next to him or on his lap or somewhere and I'd tell him
what I did that day.
CR: And would this be at the end of every
day?
EL: Yeah. Telling time.
CR: Before dinner?
EL: Yeah, when he was home. He travelled quite a lot picking out
locations for dealerships: General Motors--Buick, Olds, Pontiac.
CR: It sounds like he was warm and
affectionate when he was around.
EL: Yeah. But we only got to know each other after I came out of the
service; then we would play golf together and go to the bar after and have some
beers, and it was fun.
CR: But he died young, right?
EL: 1948.
CR: Just a few years after you got out of
the service.
EL: Right, two years after.
CR: So he didn't live to see you succeed as
a writer.
EL: Didn't see me write a word.
CR: That must be kind of tough, or do you
ever think of it? Maybe it doesn't
occur to you to think of it.
EL: Yeah, I've thought of it, but my mother
saw it. My mother saw it happen.
CR: Was she proud?
EL: Yes, she had a little shrine in the
living room with the books, just the books on display. Everything but the rope, the [velvet]
covered rope area roped off.
CR: Your mom is also the one who told you
about your secret friend, “Boyee,” and that moment from the first interview has
sort of haunted me ever since. You
said it was when you were in Oklahoma City, but you don't remember this
yourself. It's just something you
remembered your mother telling you, is that right?
EL: I guess, because no, I don't remember
any scenarios with Boyee, but I must have told her that Boyee and I went
somewhere and did something. I had
friends. I wasn't a loner.
CR: I don't know anything about imaginary
friends. I sometimes find myself
in situations where I sort of will talk to myself, but the reason [Boyee] has
sort of stuck with me for the last several weeks is because I was just looking
at Killshot again to teach it in class and right at the beginning of Killshot,
you write, “The Blackbird told himself he was drinking too much because he
lived in this hotel and the Silver Dollar was close by, right downstairs.” But the way in which he tells himself
this is almost the way in which you would think he's talking to an imaginary
friend, because the very next sentence starts with this imperative, "Try
to walk out the door past them. Try to come along Spadina Avenue, see that godamn Silver Dollar sign,
hundreds of light bulbs in your face and not be drawn in there."
EL: Yeah, but he's talking to himself.
CR: True, but there's a sense in which when
you have your characters talking to themselves I almost feel like they're
having imaginary conversations and they're making themselves kind of an
imaginary friend to bounce things off of.
EL: Well, it's easier for me than writing
in a narrative sense. I want to
keep the sound of my characters as much as possible all through, and I don't
want to show myself. I don't want
to use any kind of language that they wouldn't. But almost 100% of the authors do.
CR:
When you're imagining your character talking to him or herself, though, it's
like you're listening to an imaginary friend. It's like you're listening to these voices in your
head. In Paul Challen's book [Get Dutch] you describe that process as
almost like a case of multiple personality: “So once I get into it and I'm the
character or both of the characters, or all of them, it's just a lot of fun and
I get it going and try to entertain myself.”
EL: Yeah, it's got to be fun.
CR: Like you're all these imaginary
characters all in your head at once, and obviously it is a lot of fun.
EL: And it's not taking it too seriously
also.
CR: Well, that really comes across.
EL: I think it's very evident in this book
[Djibouti] that would ordinarily be a
very serious book.
CR: It's hard to avoid being serious, what
with terrorists, and Al-Qaeda, and all the rest of it. I brought along Road Dogs, which I really enjoyed. Here you've got Dawn Navarro,
she's turning into one of your favorite characters, I think, talking to herself
in the mirror.
EL: Oh, yeah. She puts her eye makeup on.
CR: She becomes that cross-dressing
pharaoh?
EL: Who was probably gay, she wanted to be
a guy, I think.
CR: So she's talking to herself in the
mirror and she's trying to come up with a good parting line for Jack, when she
kills him. A lot of your
characters do this, rehearse their parting lines when
they're about to blow someone away. Wayne does it in Killshot where he imagines sneaking up on Armand
and Richie Nix. So Dawn is
imagining blowing Jack Foley away and she cocks the gun and says, [reading]:
"So long Jack, it's
been fun? a ball? it's been
nice knowing you?" She said,
"It's been nice knowing you." She said "It was nice taking showers with
you." She was making it hard,
trying to think instead of just saying it. How about I love you Jack, but you're no $6 million dollar
man. That wasn't bad, he'd get
it. She said to her image, “Did
you ever think you were greedy?” "Not really." "You ever think of yourself as a
cold bitch." "When I
have to be, but I'm never really cold." "You think, when you've put in eight long years living
by yourself. . .?” “Poor you." "Well, it's true. I
waited eight fucking years for something to happen and had to do it myself.” “Poor, poor you." "Shut up.” “You ready?” “ Let's go, girl."
Teddy
Magyk, too, he does the same thing when he's getting ready to blow away Vincent
Mora, the cop who put him away in Glitz--he
keeps delaying and putting it off, but finally talks to himself in the
mirror.
So
you've got these characters talking to themselves as though they're talking to
an imaginary friend. Here's Dawn
talking to her literal reflection in the mirror. It's Dawn, but it's also a part of Dawn that is somebody else.
EL:
Yes, it is, yes.
CR: Since we talked last I watched the DVD
of Killshot. How do you assess that as a movie
version of your book? You're not
always happy with how these are translated to the screen.
EL: Well, her husband was wrong, he was
just kind of there and they tried, in the picture, to show that they were at
odds with one another.
CR: They were getting a divorce.
EL: Yeah.
CR:
I didn't think that worked.
EL: It didn't. It didn't, because there was no evidence of it. Why are they like this? It's much better in the book. They're in love. They fight a little bit, so what. He throws a drink, but then she wants
to throw a drink but she doesn't want to hit the carpet. And he makes a comment about that. And then it's funny.
CR: It's hard to see why they want to get
back together in the movie. The
other thing I noticed was there are things that [the movie makers] need to
invent or underline over and over again to provide motivations for
characters. For instance, they
seem to think we have to understand that Armand Degas hangs with Richie Nix
because he feels guilty about his brother being killed. They mention it over
and over and over again. “You
remind me of my kid brother,” he tells Richie Nix or he has flashbacks to his
kid brother getting killed in the hit in Toronto. Did you mean that to come out in the book at all?
EL: No.
CR: So somebody who did the screenwriting,
I suppose, or the director decided to really latch on to that as a motivation
for Armand. In the book, however, your use of interior monologue makes us
understand why he wants to hang out with Richie, and it’s not guilt over his
brother. Richie is Armand’s ticket
out of this miserable sense of himself that he has. None of that can come through looking at it on the screen:
you can't get in their heads. But
overall I didn't think it was a bad movie.
EL: No, except that Wayne’s there at the
end to shoot Armand, which is what Bruce Willis wanted
to do. That's why I wouldn't give
it to him.
CR: Yeah, I don't like the end. Wayne and Carmen both get in the
“Killshot,” unlike the ending in the book.
EL: No, it's got to be her alone.
CR:
And what did you think of making Donna Mulry this young black, sexy girlfriend
of Richie's? Do you remember her
in the movie?
EL: Oh, yeah, that was all wrong because in
the book you know what she was. She was kind of a cross-eyed blonde with a lot of hair and
that's what she was.
CR: Sort of like his stepmom.
EL:
Yeah.
CR:
She would buy his clothes for him.
EL: Oh, [the movie] was all wrong, putting
him with a good-looking black girl.
CR: Because I guess they couldn't figure
out why we would believe Richie Nix would hang out with this older woman, old
enough to be his mother, but that's so clearly part of his personality in the
book. He's been in foster
homes. His stepmom abandoned him
and he's looking for a mom. So I thought that worked really well in the book
and they missed all of that in the movie version. And they dropped some of the best lines, like when Armand
gets the drop on Richie in the car. “Well,” Armand says, "I shoot people sometimes." They kept that line, but they dropped
Richie’s comeback: "You're just the guy I'm looking for." That turns the whole scene, just grabs
it and turns it like a glove, turns it inside out in one line. And there's no sense of humor.
EL: I remember asking the director why he
dropped that and he said, “I know.” He said, “That was a mistake,” because he was trying to stay very close
to the story.
CR: Have you gotten to the point where you
sort of distrust what Hollywood's going to do with your books?
EL: No. I'm always optimistic. But in this book [Djibouti]
they're talking about Dr. Strangelove and Dara says, “God, I don't know, I got
so tired of these people,” the pirates, I forgot what she said about being
their characters.
CR: They're trying to play a role or
something?
EL: And Helene says they're having
fun. They're all
having fun, they love their roles. And that's why they're overdoing
them. That was it, the overdoing
of the dialogue.