Peruse the Mystery/Thriller section in your local bookstore (I know most of you don't have a "local bookstore" anymore, but humor me), and the same names jump out at you: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Dick Francis, Donald E. Westlake, Carl Hiassen, Mary Higgins Clark, Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter), John D. MacDonald, P.D. James and so on. Each name is an addiction waiting to plunge a page-turning narcotic into your veins; once you crack the spine on THE HUNTER or THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY or RUM PUNCH, your bedside will be cluttered with a stack of three-hundred-page (on average) novels that will be devoured within the week - even if… no, especially if work is kicking your ass.
Dustin Hoffman once said "We could stop the art right now, and you wouldn't be able to read enough or see enough of the great stuff." While this is true, mystery aficionados operate on the belief that this is bullshit. They can read it all, and they'll drive their wives and husbands and kids batty with constant distraction, repeating as a mantra this bald-faced lie: "Just let me finish this chapter."
Crime and mystery novels offer a rush unlike any other genre in the publishing racket, and the authors who master the delivery system become our pushers. From 2002 to 2004, Lawrence Block ran all the business on my corner. Upon reading Scott Frank's adaptation of Block's A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, I instantly snapped up the first five books detailing the boozy exploits of unlicensed private detective Matthew Scudder. An ex-cop, Scudder quit the force after accidentally killing a young girl in the crossfire of a gunfight with armed criminals; now, he does favors for people desperate for help (some of whom aren't always straight-up with him). For four books, Scudder operated in roughly the same fashion; he doggedly pieced together whatever mystery was before him while guzzling booze, coffee and more booze as fuel. But unlike many detective series, Scudder grew older and, most importantly, became more of a drunk with each book.
Then came EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE, where Scudder's personal failings built to a stunning catharsis. Block was already one of the top mystery writers going, but this novel placed him on a level with masters like Westlake, Leonard and MacDonald. It was so undeniably great, Hollywood couldn't help but turn it into an utter fiasco (which was all the more heartbreaking because the compromised result was Hal Ashby's final film). Two years later, Warner Bros. took a whack at another of Block's characters, the gentleman thief Bernie Rhodenbarr, which amounted to BURGLAR starring Whoopie Goldbert as "Bernice" Rhodenbarr; it was better than EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE if only due to meager expectations.
Aside from writing the screenplay for Wong Kar-Wai's MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, Block's work has generally remained on the bookshelves since the late '80s. But after a decade-plus of development hell (including an eleventh-hour collapse involving director Joe Carnahan and the ever-mercurial Harrison Ford), Scott Frank has finally muscled his adaptation of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES onto the big screen, and it is the Matthew Scudder movie fans have been waiting for since the Asbhy/Oliver Stone botch of nearly thirty years ago. Best of all, the author is pleased - both with Scott's treatment of the material and Neeson's portrayal of his guilt-ridden private eye.
When Universal asked around about interviewing folks connected to the film, I eagerly inquired as to whether Mr. Block would be available for a chat. Last week, I got an email informing me that one of my all-time favorite mystery writers was indeed open to an interview. Over the course of twenty minutes, we discussed A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES' rough road to production, the pain and pleasure of watching one's work transferred to another medium, his feelings about Ashby's EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE and much more.
Jeremy: As a reader of the books, I feel like they finally got Matthew Scudder bang-on right.
Lawrence Block: I couldn't agree more. I'm delighted about the whole thing. It owes everything really to Scott's maintaining his enthusiasm for the project after it appeared dead in the water.
Jeremy: Liam is so good, I can't imagine anyone else in the role. How did you feel about that scuttled Harrison Ford iteration?
Block: He's a fine actor, certainly, and I feel he could've done fine - though my enthusiasm for him slipped significantly when he pulled out of the project at the eleventh hour. (Laughs) But Liam was really ranked very high, right at the top of my list for it very early on.
Jeremy: What attributes as an actor did you feel Neeson would bring to the role of Scudder?
Block: One, certainly, is the sense of an inner life. You really need for the part someone who you have a sense of something going on behind his eyes as it were.
Jeremy: When the project came back around, and Neeson was in talks, were you still cynical that it would ever happen?
Block: I really thought that it wouldn't happen at all. After it fell apart the first time, Jersey Films renewed the option for a couple of years and then stopped, at which point they no longer had any title to the property, and I thought possibly someone else would come along to make a movie from the Scudder series. But I didn't expect anything further on this. Then I ran into Scott at a screening of THE LOOKOUT, and he told me then that he still had every hope of making the movie. I thought, "Gee, that'd be nice," but I didn't expect anything. Then when it came together on this latest occasion, it came together really quickly.
Jeremy: Did you ever give notes on the screenplay? How involved were you throughout this process?
Block: I avoided reading the screenplay. Back at the very beginning, Scott sent a screenplay over to me, and I read a couple of pages and realized that I wasn't going to be comfortable reading it. I would be very comfortable seeing the film itself when it was shot, or even being there while it was shooting, but I didn't want to see changes to the story in raw form. I knew that that would bother me, very possibly for no reason. So I did not read the screenplay.
Jeremy: How did you ultimately feel about the alterations, in particularly removing Elaine from the story?
Block: Some of the changes were clearly essential, like removing the Kongs, the two computer hackers. Although they were fine for the period in which the movie is set, that whole bit of business would be incomprehensible to a young, modern audience. That I knew had to be dropped. I was sorry to see Elaine dropped from the story, I was sorry to see certain changes, but I was not that upset. I could certainly understand making those changes.
Jeremy: That's always the difficult thing about moving a story into another medium.
Block: Of course! It's absolutely another medium, and there's no way you can fit a 300-page book, with all its incident, into a screenplay. Frequently when people try, the result is a mess.
Jeremy: How did you feel about TJ?
Block: I felt that [Astro] really nailed it. It's a somewhat different characterization from the book, but I really think it works.
Jeremy: How do you feel about these kinds of thrillers being made for the big screen as opposed to what's going on in television with things like JUSTIFIED, TRUE DETECTIVE and FARGO? Talking to Scott, he wasn't sure if there's an audience for a movie like this. He seemed to think that TV might be the place for it.
Block: It's hard to know. In a lot of respects, TV is a more adult medium than film - especially for this kind of story. I think this particular film works - to the extent that it will work with a large audience, we can't know yet, but all the signs seem to be good.
Jeremy: Do you have any favorite shows that keep you hooked?
Block: Yes. Several. My wife and I absolutely love RAY DONOVAN. We're looking forward to the new season of SONS OF ANARCHY. And we love TRUE DETECTIVE; it'll be very interesting to see what the next season of that looks like. And HOUSE OF CARDS. We like that a lot.
Jeremy: Have there been any discussions about bringing one of your characters to television?
Block: There's interest periodically. I just had an inquiry about Bernie Rhodenbarr the other day. There's somebody who would really like to do [John Keller] on TV. You know the medium: there's always tons of interest in everything, and most things don't happen. It'll be interesting to see. I would really love to see Keller as a cable series.
Jeremy: The first Scudder book came out in 1976. When you create a character, or simply write a book, are you thinking that this is a series, that this is a character you'd like to stick with?
Block: Most of my series have been unintentional, but Scudder was conceived as a series. My agent at the time suggested that a series about a tough New York cop would be a good idea for me to try. I did propose a series, and knew right away that I'd be more comfortable writing from the point of view of an ex-cop and an outsider than a member of a functioning organization. I thought when I wrote the first three books - and I wrote them one after the other - I thought at the time, as with virtually all series, for however long I wound up writing it, the character would remain unchanged, and his situation would essentially remain unchanged and so on. That's usually what happened back then with private eye characters. But like Bogart in CASABLANCA, I was misinformed. It turned out as I wrote it that the level of realism the character had for me required that he grow older, that his life in one book be influenced by experiences he'd undergone in the previous one and so on. He's had quite a journey.
Jeremy: One that changes significantly in EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE.
Block: Yeah.
Jeremy: That made it an interesting a choice for a standalone movie, which then became… well, what it is.
Block: Right (Laughs)
Jeremy: How do you feel about that movie now? Have you tried watching it lately?
Block: (Laughing) No. I watched it, of course, when it came out, and I was not happy with it. But it's not just a case of the author on his high horse; hardly anybody in the world was terribly happy with it. It was a critical and commercial failure. The next time I saw it was years later. I think it was 1992. My wife and I walked across Spain on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and at the end of one absolutely exhausting day we wound up at an inn in Basque country. We're sitting down and having a meal, and EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE dubbed in Spanish came on the TV set. (Laughs) We thought we were having some TWILIGHT ZONE experience. It was very strange.
Jeremy: Did you have any discussions with Hal Ashby or Oliver Stone before the movie was made?
Block: I met Oliver Stone when he'd optioned the property. He came into New York, and we sat down and spent an evening talking. I think he was jet-lagged or whatever, but he was kind of twitchy; he said at the time that he wanted me to work on the film with him. You know, I kind of wish I had that back. I thought about it, and decided I didn't want to. I probably should've done that, given it a shot. It might not have been the happiest experience of my life, but it probably would've been worth doing.
Jeremy: There's this thing that we always hear about with writers and the characters they create: the writer may feel like they're done with the character, but the readers aren't. What keeps you writing when or if that becomes the case?
Block: I don't think that's why I do it. But what happens… I thought I was done with the Scudder series several times, first of all after EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE, where the character has this catharsis at the end of the book, and his life, we assume, is going to change completely. I thought, "That's probably it. I've written, in one sense, a five-volume novel, and it's now finished. There's no way to follow it." Then what would happen was, over time, I would see that there was another book to write, and I would write it. There have been a few times when I thought I was done, but I now can say it would really surprise me if I wrote anything further about Scudder. I mean, the poor son-of-a-bitch is seventy-six years old; I don't think he's ready to leap tall buildings in a single bound anymore. But who knows? I've just learned that "never say never" is a good rule here.
Jeremy: How do you write? Do you write longhand or on a computer?
Block: I use a computer. Obviously, I didn't when the series started because they hadn't been invented yet, but I use a MacBook Air. What I most often do is go off and hole up somewhere and dedicate a month or six weeks just to the writing of whatever the project is.
Jeremy: And you can pretty much count on it being done within that timeframe?
Block: If it's going to work, I can pretty much count on it. What I can't count on is that it will work. (Laughs)
Jeremy: How do you know if it's something you might have to abandon?
Block: Oh, it just feels absolutely dead. That's happened a couple of times. A couple of times I was off at a writer's colony or something like that, and on one of those occasions, I wrote about 200 pages of what would eventually be A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE, and realized… it wasn't badly written, but it wasn't the right way to approach the book. I needed for time to pass, so I just put it aside. Of those 200 pages, I wound up using a page-and-a-half, so it was really a wrong direction. But the rest of the time I was booked there, I started writing short stories, and one of them wound up being the first story about Keller, so it was not as though that was wasted time.
Jeremy: Is there one book in particular that you'd like to see done as a movie?
Block: I hope there will be sequels to A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. I know that Scott would like that to happen, and Liam would like that to happen. It's certainly a question of how this film is received as to whether or not it will. In the series, the books that strike me as eminently filmable are A TICKET TO THE BONEYARD, A LONG LINE OF DEAD MEN and EVERYBODY DIES. I think those three in particular would work on screen. But a big determinant there is which of them really works for Scott because he's the one who's going to be writing the thing.
As for other books of mine… gee, I don't know. There's one I wrote just a couple of years ago called GETTING OFF, a novel of sex and violence. The right young actress could really make a meal out of that one.
Jeremy: I agree. And they already have the poster for that one.
Block: Right! (Laughs) That is some cover, isn't it?
A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES hits theaters this Friday, September 19th. Lawrence Block's fifty-plus novels are available at your local bookstore - be that your Kindle, iPad or physical, brick-and-mortar bookstore. Dig in and thank me later.
Faithfully submitted,
Jeremy Smith
