With respect to the Campbell story, is that mythic power truly inherent within us, or is that socialized, a thing we tell ourselves in order to build our world?
I could say there’s any number of thoughts, from the idea there might be a collective unconsciousness that we inherently sense, or an idea that we’re called to be heroes. I will just say it makes for great storytelling to constantly take people back and forth from mythic states to human states.
It’s something Marvel gets exactly right: they know when to shoot someone mythic, like stepping out of a fog in slow motion. But then the character stubs their toe and falls over. And Marvel does both. There’s a wonderful moment in ‘Civil War.’ Sebastian Stan is the Winter Soldier: he’s tortured and he’s brutalized, but then there’s a moment where he’s nudging Anthony Mackie, because Captain America is kissing a girl. They know how to shift it up, to break the tone. Otherwise, he’s just a mythic character walking around scowling.
“So that’s what I love about the private eye —the grouchy, curmudgeonly, very reluctant hero appeals to me.”
I’ve seen people ding Marvel’s movies as childish because they rely on jokes as an inherent part of storytelling, which seems absurd to me.
I share your incredulity at that sort of comment! There are people who demand that you treat a mythic character with nothing resembling normal behavior —those people can’t imagine them using the bathroom. To me, it’s all about the guys who use the bathroom and leave it smelly, who then have to be heroes. Those are the guys, the workaday fellows. They missed a spot when they shaved. Every time I watch a movie and see someone who looks perfect, I think, “When does he shit?”
So that’s what I love about the private eye —the grouchy, curmudgeonly, very reluctant hero appeals to me. Even in “Lethal Weapon,” which is essentially an urban western, Mel Gibson channels this thing which is almost like a hurricane when he becomes that violent demon. But apart from that aspect, he’s fractured and messed up and makes bad jokes. He doesn’t just have to talk in terse monosyllables and be a mythic character start to finish.
You’ve written many characters who wrestle with self-loathing and issues of confidence. What does that idea mean to you now, versus what it meant to you twenty or thirty years ago?
Well, particularly being prone to depression, it’s the fascination of what, if anything, can reawaken the spark that makes a day seem like it has promise, as opposed to a bleak landscape you can’t possibly navigate another minute of.
The sense that there’s always a mystery beckoning on the horizon no matter what age you’ve come to or how far down the latter you’ve fallen, to know that somehow you can still look up and feel a call to something different or better, is important. I love stories about guys who have given up and then realize they have one more big adventure in them. They didn’t know it, since they thought they were done. To me, it’s still a very important idea, because it’s cathartic.
You’re very well read. What are some novels that have been key to you, or that you draw frequent inspiration from?
I like certain fast, funny writers, like Gregory McDonald, who did the “Fletch” books, which are very different than the movies. Warren Murphy was a mentor of mine, and wrote a series of men’s adventure novels called “The Destroyer.” There’s Ed McBain, aka Evan Hunter: I ate up his 87th Precinct books. There are 54 of them, and I’ve read 50.
“There’s some pretty nightmarish stuff in “Predator.” [But] once again, tone shifts. I don’t want it to be humorless.”
Why only fifty?
I guess the last four I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ve been sort of saving them.
But I also like things that are harsh. I was a big fan of Donald Hamilton, who simultaneously wrote westerns and spy novels. He wrote the “Matt Helm” books, but they’re so different from the goofy, swinging private eye thing he did. And these days, they’re airport reading, but boy, is Lee Child good.
He’s really consistently good.
I’ve very seldom seen him miss. In fact, the one they’re making into the movie now, “Never Go Back,” is one I didn’t like as much.
“It’s kicking. ‘Doc Savage is a real thing. We’re just waiting on Dwayne Johnson.“
That one seems like it was chosen because there’s the young woman character…
Yeah, the father/daughter type relationship. But he gets it. Some people know how to rivet you and make something visceral and real. And I believe in the catharsis of taking someone to a low point.
So in the old “Charlie’s Angels” TV show, someone kidnaps the women and then [the bad guys] play cards while the characters are squirming in the corner. “Leave ‘em alone, just keep playing!” That’s not dangerous.
Now imagine someone’s kidnapped a guy: they break his jaw, he falls down, they cut off two of his fingers, he somehow gets a knife and cuts one of them. He stumbles out, half dead, shoots someone and stands there… you think “Wow, that guy got out of a bad spot.” He was taken pretty low and could have easily stayed there. You think, “Fuck it, if he got that low and came back, I can too.” But not if there’s no danger, not if you just leave the girls in the corner.
And to that end, there’s also horror. I’m a huge horror fan. I love authors like Stephen King and F. Paul Wilson —they’re very popcorn but I love them. Or if you go back to Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. I like ghost stories, like MR James. It reminds you that even back in days which people associate with staid, traditional, scholarly writing, here’s the man who was the head provost of a major university [King’s College at Cambridge], but he still said “Fuck it, every Christmas I just found a new way to scare people.”