getyourgoodnews/maxcollins

By Sean Leary
www.getyourgoodnews.com

Max Allan Collins' name has become as synonymous with the crime
genre as that of his hero, Mickey Spillane.

For three decades, Collins has been firing out an entertaining array of
hard-boiled detectives, sultry dames and deadly villains. From his work
on countless film and TV novelizations to his creation of ``Road to
Perdition'' - which became an Oscar-winning film with an all-star cast -
Collins has become the gold standard in his genre. Mystery and crime
fans know that when they pick up a Collins book, they're going to get
what they want - in spades. Sam Spades.

Collins will be signing his latest tome, ``You Can't Stop Me,'' as well as
his other books, at 2 p.m. Saturday at Borders, 4000 E. 53rd St.,
Davenport.

Recently, he took time out from his busy schedule to talk about his past,
present and future as a master of mystery.

Q: Tell me about your current project. How did you get the idea, how did
it evolve, and how does it fit into your artistic career?

A: For a professional writer, "current project" is a tricky subject. I am just
about to begin (either today or tomorrow, having just completed the
outline), a novel called QUARRY'S EX. It's the latest in a series I began
way back at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the early '70s.
The first of the novels, THE BROKER (also published as QUARRY),
came out in the mid-'70s, followed by three more about the same
character, a hitman -- the first novel series about a hitman, actually. I did
another about the character in the mid-'80s, when I had a certain amount
of success with my Nate Heller historical series and was given the
opportunity to write a couple of novels of my own choice. I reverted to my
first two character, Quarry and Nolan, both characters developed at the
Writers Workshop -- the novels were PRIMARY TARGET and SPREE,
respectively.

Over the years I wrote the occasional short story about the Quarry
character, and about half a dozen years ago, one of these became a
short film that I scripted for a talented young filmmaker, Jeffrey Goodman,
from Louisiana. The short film, "A Matter of Prinicipal," did very well on
the festival circuit, and its success prompted Jeffrey to commission from
me a feature-length script. I wound up turning that script into a novel
called THE LAST QUARRY (I thought the film would never happen and
wanted to salvage the project, actually). Then Jeffrey actually got it
made, as THE LAST LULLABY, with Tom Sizemore as Quarry. That
movie did great on the festival circuit, and had a limited theatrical release
nationally, including in Davenport, at the 53rd Street cinema multiplex.
There's a limited edition DVD available on line, but it should turn up on
cable and in more traditional DVD sales fairly soon.

All of this sparked interest, both from reviewers and readers, in Quarry,
so I wound up recently starting the series back up. Very unusual for a
series that was born and seemingly died in the mid-'70s, but one of the
delights and surprises of having a long career -- people occasionally
discover something you wrote a long time ago. When it was suggested I
had ended the series with THE LAST QUARRY, my "reply" was a novel
called THE FIRST QUARRY, set in 1970.

Q: I'm sure you, like many creative people, have a ton of ideas and never
enough time to see all of them through. How do you decide which one is
going to come to the forefront and become the one you dedicate your
energy to at any given time?

A: There's an aircraft controller aspect to it, actually, with the novels and
comics. I write proposals and make pitches to editors at various
publishers, and when these sell, they are scheduled according to what
I've already got on my plate, and when the publisher needs it. If I'm doing
a novel based on a Hollywood movie, like the recent G.I. JOE, I may have
to slip that in between projects I've already got going -- the tie-in stuff
("tie-in" means a novel based on a movie or TV property, the movie ones
being novels based on screenplays, the TV ones being original stories
using the characters from a popular TV show) is usually on a shorter,
demanding deadline. That's why I brought Matt Clemens on board to do
my research on the CSI series and eventually to co-plot and even
co-author those books. Matt has collaborated with me on eight CSI
novels, two CSI Miami, one Bones, three Dark Angel and three Criminal
Minds novels. The movie novels I do by myself.

Pet projects, like BLACK HATS and RED SKY AT MORNING, published
under my Patrick Culhane penname, I save for when the opportunity to do
them presents itself. BLACK HATS is about a confrontation between old
Wyatt Earp and young Al Capone, and RED SKY is based on my late
father's WW 2 experiences as a young officer commanding a large group
of black sailors.

Q: Let's talk about how you got started, for those readers who are
unfamiliar with your work. When did you begin your career as a writer,
why did you choose it as a profession, and give us a quick -- or as quick
as it can be -- recap of your creative life up to this point.

A: I've always been interested in storytelling. I read every novel and comic
book I could get my hands on, as a kid. I started out wanting to be a
cartoonist and that was my path well into junior high, when I discovered
hardboiled fiction (now usually called "noir"). This was an offshoot of the
private eye craze of late '50s and early '60s TV -- PETER GUNN, 77
SUNSET STRIP, THE THIN MAN, PERRY MASON, MIKE HAMMER.
The latter three, being based on books by Dashiell Hammett, Erle
Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane, respectively, led me to the source
material. By high school I was writing novels imitative of those writers and
several others -- Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, particularly. I
wrote five novels in high school and early college that were never
published (and never will be). But the discipline and experience of the
process meant that I had professional level skills by college, and that
eventually got me into the Writers Workshop, where I worked with the
great mainstream novelist, Richard Yates, author of REVOLUTIONARY
ROAD. He was my mentor and landed me my first agent. I sold two
novels during my last semester in grad school in the Workshop -- a real
triumph, since I was put down there a lot for writing commerical fiction
and not art. Many of the teachers and my fellow students had that
attitude. But Yates understood I was serious about my art and my craft,
and was fairly astonished, I think, that I had the professional skills I did
when I was twenty, entering his class.

I taught at Muscatine Community College for a few years, while I got my
writing career off the ground. I played in my band, Crusin', and was briefly
a professional musician, when I had a dry spell of around two years
between novel sales. The big break was the DICK TRACY comic strip,
which I landed in a talent hunt, having been recommended for
consideration based largely upon my first two novels, BAIT MONEY and
BLOOD MONEY, which had a secondary character who was a comics
collector. I'd been unwittingly training to write comics, in general, and
TRACY, in particular, through my young life. My version of TRACY was
well-accepted, and led to offers to write comic books, too. I did BATMAN
for a while, and also co-created MS. TREE with Muscatine cartoonist,
Terry Beatty -- it became the longest-running private eye comic book of
all time (around 70 issues, through the '80s and early '90s). Terry and I
did several other projects, including WILD DOG for DC, which got lots of
QC attention at the time because we set it in the Quad Cities, with many
local settings easily recognizable. Eventually I got fired from TRACY,
after a nasty run-in with a new editor (the guy who hired me had also
been fired, which sealed my fate), and almost immediately I pitched the
idea for the graphic novel, ROAD TO PERDITION, to an editor at DC. It
was, of course, loosely based on Rock Island's John Looney and his
gang.

Really, for all these years I've explored storytelling in any way that (a)
interested me, and (b) helped me make a living. This includes comic
strips, comic books, graphic novels, trading cards, non-fiction books,
regular columns for magazines (most recently for ASIAN CULT CINEMA),
screenplays but most of all, and the steadiest thing, novels...usually
mystery or suspense. In the mid-'90s, I got frustrated by having sold
several things to the movies but never getting anything made, and a
group of us raised the money to produce MOMMY. A sequel followed,
and several other indie projects, plus two documentaries. National
distribution came to all of it, with MOMMY the biggest success probably,
since it was a primetime Lifetime movie and a chain-wide Blockbuster
pick. Two of my films have been shown on IPTV, most recently the
feature version of my play, ELIOT NESS: AN UNTOUCHABLE LIFE.

The biggest success, of course, was having DreamWorks buy ROAD TO
PERDITION. Having a Tom Hanks/Paul Newman/Jude Law/Daniel Craig
movie, directed by Sam Mendes, opened a lot of doors for me. I was able
to write two prose sequels, ROAD TO PURGATORY and ROAD TO
PARADISE, for William Morrow, and ROAD TO PERDITION 2: ON THE
ROAD for DC, a second graphic novel that fills in some of the blanks from
the first one. Right now I'm working on RETURN TO PERDITION for DC, a
graphic novel conclusion to the saga -- Terry Beatty is drawing it (he's in
the Twin Cities now), and I am working on it in increments of 18 pages, in
and around other work. About half-way through that project. It's set in the
'70s and is about the third generation of O'Sullivan men.

Also, my frequent indie movie partner Phil Dingeldein and I have been
working very hard to get a film made of ROAD TO PURGATORY here in
the QC. We've been on this for going on three years -- the script is
written -- and have high hopes.

Q: What was it like finally seeing ``Perdition'' up on the screen, and how
thrilling was it to see artists of such pedigree involved with it?

A: It seemed like a practical joke at first -- my agent would call and say,
"Tom Hanks is starring," then a day later, "Paul Newman is co-starring, "
then two days later, "Sam Mendes is directing." Mendes had just won
the Best Picture Oscar. I was working with Phil on a $15,000 indie in
Muscatine (REAL TIME: SIEGE AT LUCAS STREET MARKET). This
was to be an $80,000,000 production.

I guess I didn't believe it till I was on set and met the people and saw the
process (which frankly isn't much different than what Phil and I do, just
more and better food). When I saw a preview in a theater for the film, it
really kind of hit me -- particularly when I saw a snippet of the driving
scene (father teaches son to drive) that was based on my father teaching
me to drive, and me scaring the hell out of him. My dad passed away in
2000, so seeing Tom Hanks filling my pop's shoes...that was an
emotional moment, underscored by knowing that he wouldn't experience
his son's career high.

The first time I saw the finished film, I guess you'd have to say what I felt
was relief. When my son Nate liked it, I felt I was home free. It's a
wonderful film. It would be one of my favorites even if I'd had nothing to do
with it -- of course, it suits my tastes, since it's based on my stuff.

Q: You've got a substantive background in comics and film. Did your
comics background make it easier to make that transition to the big
screen, given that each deal with a melding of text and image as
storytelling structures?

A: No question that years of comics scripting made it an easy transition
to screenwriting. Most novelists are horrible screenwriters -- horrible.
They do not understand the exterior nature of film as compared to the
interior nature of novels. But I was used to thinking in pictures, and to
being sparing with words, letting those pictures talk. Piece of cake for
me.

Q: What do you like best about each of the creative disciplines you've
tackled?

A: In novels, I like the complete creative control. My vision, unchallenged,
unfettered, uncensored.

In films, the opposite is the case, but in a good way -- it's collaborative,
and it brings me out of the bunker I'm usually holed away in, to breathe
some real creative air. I can honestly say that there are few places I
would rather be than a film set, if I'm in charge that is, or an editing suite.
I do not find either in the last bit boring, and those whose first comment
is about how boring film sets are aren't cut out for the craft.

Q: Looking back, what are your favorite works that you've created and
why?

A: That's hard. I really like my own work. Certainly all of it is flawed, but
these are my children. Probably least important are the work-for-hire
things, the CSIs and so on. But a few of those were really rewarding --
the novels of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and AMERICAN GANGSTER, for
instance. A terrible script called DAYLIGHT became arguably one of my
best books, certainly one of my best tie-in works.

Top of the list for me is Nathan Heller. The novel TRUE DETECTIVE,
which won the Private Eye Writers of American "Best Novel" Shamus
Award in 1984, put me on the map as a somebody who was more than
just the guy who wrote DICK TRACY. The sequels have been
award-nominees and occasionally winners, and extremely well-reviewed
and, I say with zero modesty, very influential. I did these steadily through
the '80s and '90s. In the '00s, I was tied up doing PERDITION projects,
but the first new Heller in ten years, BYE BYE, BABY (about the murder
of Marilyn Monroe), will be out next year. The area of fact-based noir
fiction -- and ROAD TO PERDITION, itself a kind of spin-off of Nathan
Heller -- is my major area of achievement. It's what I'm best known for
and represents my best shot at having a meaningful legacy.

ROAD TO PERDITION is an obvious career highlight. But I'm also proud
of the Quarry series, because it was innovative and it's where I go to tell
stories at their most uninhibited.

Of the films I've written and directed, I do think the two MOMMYs will
always remain very special to me. Probably the films that reflect my
filmmaking skills best are the comics documentary, CAVEMAN: V.T.
HAMILIN & ALLEY OOP, and ELIOT NESS: AN UNTOUCHABLE LIFE, a
one-man show with very limited sets that Phil and I managed to make
fairly cinematic.

Q: At this point, you could live anywhere and retain your career. Why do
you stay in Muscatine, and how do you feel that helps or hinders you
from a creative or recognition standpoint?

A: I stayed here because my family and Barb's were here. I'm an only
child, and Barb was the only one of seven who still lived in the area. We
had a responsibility to our folks, simple as that, and both our mothers are
alive and elderly and need us around. It was also a great place to raise
Nate -- Muscatine has a very good school system. And the cost of living
isn't bad. And I've been able to make movies here, playing off my minor
local celebrity, and to play in a rock 'n' roll band more or less constantly
since 1966, with a small pool of players -- my first bass player, Chuck
Bunn, going back to '66, is in the current line-up of Crusin'. And the
original band, the Daybreakers, had an Atlantic single, "Psychedelic
Siren," that is a true cult classic, featured over the years on many
nationally and internationally distributed LP and CD garage-band
collections, having been a regional hit, including three months on KSTT's
Top 40. We opened for the Rascals at the Masonic Temple in 1968 -- talk
about career highs! And a year ago we were inducted into the Iowa Rock
n' Roll Hall of Fame at Arnold's Park. That one's hard to beat.

Q: Which writers do you admire, which have been the biggest influence
on you, and why?

A: Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M.
Cain, Jim Thompson, Rex Stout, Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie,
Chester Himes, William March, Mark Harris. All mystery writers, except
the last two -- March wrote THE BAD SEED and Harris wrote BANG THE
DRUM SLOWLY. In the world of comics, it's Al Capp, Chester Gould,
Will Eisner, Milton Caniff and Johnny Craig. These were not influences,
really -- more like the vitamins I took as a kid.

Q: What advice would you give to anyone desiring a career in writing, or
the arts?

A: Don't.

That's at least half-serious, because if you can be discouraged, you
should be -- it takes incredible will power, persistence and flat-out luck to
make a living at this. I am still struggling, chasing jobs. It's still tough as
hell. The only advice I can give flows out of my experience -- don't limit
yourself to one thing. By thinking of myself as a storyteller -- not, say, a
mystery writer, or a comics writer -- I have opened myself up to many
opportunities. I am chiefly a writer of prose fiction, but my most famous
work is a graphic novel. In recent years, I've written dialogue and plots for
video games, for example. Storytelling is storytelling, but you have to
master the demands of each medium -- remember, most novelists are
terrible screenwriters. Why? They drag novel technique into
screenwriting, and it's a bad, bad fit. Each storytelling venue has its own
demands and needs.

Q: What projects are you working on now, and what do you have planned
for the future?

A: The joy right now is collaboration -- working with my beautiful bride
Barb on the "Trash 'n' Treasures" ANTIQUES cozy mystery series,
working with the not nearly as beautiful Matt Clemens on the new Harrow
series (YOU CAN'T STOP ME, the new book, is the first of at least two),
and also collaborating with the late Mickey Spillane, by completing
unfinished manuscripts from his files. The second of the collaborative
Spillane/Collins Mike Hammer novels comes out in May -- THE BIG
BANG. How's that for a Mickey Spillane title?

I am also prepping for another Heller novel, a very ambitious one dealing
with the JFK assassination.

And I remain hopeful that we can get ROAD TO PURGATORY up and
running as a film, right here in the Quad Cities. What we could do, by
bringing a film that major to the QC's, is genuinely hard to fathom, in
terms of jobs, money, and sheer fun.