Interviews
by Mark Sieber
A FEW WORDS WITH DAVID MORRELL
HW: David, CREEPERS is your darkest novel in ages. Is this an indication of a new direction in your writing?
DM: I think it's important to explore new creative concepts and give readers surprises. Maybe that's why I've lasted over 30 years as a writer-because I tried not to repeat myself. In the case of CREEPERS, my goal was to write a hybrid of thriller and horror, combining action and brooding atmosphere. It's not a supernatural story, but its tone suggests otherwise. In spots, it even feels like a time-travel novel. I wanted fans of each type of story to feel constantly off-balance because I was applying horror conventions to a thriller and thriller conventions to a horror story. Thus the reader can't ever be sure of what's going to happen. It was great fun to do, and if I can find another opportunity for that type of brooding mood, I'll write another novel like it, provided I can find a way to develop this approach rather than just repeat it.
HW: You wrote of going on a Survival Course for research on First Blood. Did you explore any abandoned houses for CREEPERS?
DM: I do a lot of research for my novels. Back in the early 1970s, I was part of a National Outdoor Leadership School group that spent 30 days in the Wind River range of Wyoming. I've taken courses in everything from car fighting to learning how to assume identities. This kind of research is useful for a writer. It helps to get the details correct. After a while, the research became sort of a trademark of my work. A couple of years ago, I read a newspaper article about urban explorers. These are history and architecture enthusiasts who explore abandoned buildings to get a sense of the past. One nickname for them is creepers. I had no idea that this activity had a name, but immediately I knew I wanted to write a novel about it. All my life I've felt a compulsion to go into old tunnels and abandoned buildings. So I didn't need to do any further physical research, but I certainly did a great deal of it on the Internet. I was amazed to find that there are thousands of urban explorer websites around the world. I read everything I could to learn about this culture and try to communicate it in the book.
HW: All of your work would be great on film, but CREEPERS seems particularly suited to the cinema. Has there been any interest from Hollywood?
DM: My novels feel like they're suited for film because I write scenically. Readers sometimes tell me that they felt they were seeing a movie in their mind. The important word there is felt. I don't write for the sense of sight. Using something I learned from the great novelist John Barth, I practice a technique called triangulation in which I take the sense of sight for granted and emphasize other senses like touch and sound. This results in a feeling of many dimensions. I talk about this technique in my writing book, LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING. Has there been Hollywood interest in CREEPERS? Yes. But when it comes to the movies, I never count on anything. Too many things can go wrong. Executives get fired. Actors lose interest. Trends change. If it happens, I'll be pleased because our society tends to validate books in terms of whether they become films. It's a weird value, but it definitely helps in terms of publicity. Only one of a hundred films that get bought is actually filmed. And of those, only a few are worth seeing. The odds are not encouraging.
HW: Speaking of the movies, your character John Rambo has practically become a cultural icon. It's ironic that a character that I found to be a tragic representation of the horror of war became a superhero of the Reagan era of patriotism. How do you feel about the First Blood movies?
DM: The first one, which is based on my novel FIRST BLOOD, works nicely, I think. Mind you, it reinterprets my story. The film takes out my anti-war theme and severely under-develops the police chief, a character I had taken pains to give many dimensions. The ending is drastically different from the one in my novel. But the movie works on its own terms. It's nicely directed and photographed and paced. Jerry Goldsmith's music is fabulous. The actors do a good job. Sylvester Stallone is impressively good with props. Richard Crenna once told me that in his long career only two actors really impressed him with their knowledge of what to do with props. They were Sylvester and Steve McQueen. The second Rambo film is an entertaining, jingoistic equivalent of a cartoon. Considered for what it is, the picture is well made and amusing from a campy point of view. But the third film has a repetitive second and third act and is basically a dramatic mess. There are plans to film a fourth movie. The production company has basically told me to get lost, so all I know is what I read on the Internet. I'm not encouraged. It doesn't sound like a Rambo story. The character is married (in real life he'd be 58), with a ten-year-old daughter, on the run from white supremacists. There'll be no headband. If you want to read my full thoughts about this project, go to www.feoamante.com.
HW: Many readers, myself included, feel that you are one of the best writers of short horror fiction. Do you still write them regularly?
DM: Thanks for the good words. My horror stories have earned two Stokers, two further Stoker nominations, and two World Fantasy nominations. They've been collected in two volumes, BLACK EVENING and NIGHTSCAPE. I now have enough for yet another collection. Basically I work on them between long projects or when a novel is giving me trouble and I need a distraction. I write about three short stories a year. Cemetery Dance's long postponed TAVERNS OF THE DEAD, edited by Kealan Patrick Burke, has one in it. I find short stories to be creative liberating. They give me the opportunity to work with themes and topics that stretch my horizons. The 1918 flu pandemic, for example, which I dramatize in "If I Should Die Before I Take." In "The Beautiful Uncut Hair of Graves" (that's a quote from Walt Whitman), I explored the second person viewpoint, employing "you" instead of "I" or "she" or "he." Very simulating.
HW: What is your work schedule? Do you have defined times when you work or is it when the muse moves you?
DM: I try to work every day. Usually, I start around 8:30 in the morning. I pause in mid-day to get some exercise. Then I continue writing until around 5 pm. My goal is five pages a day. It's the only way I know to get the work done. If I sat around and waited for the muse to visit me, I'd have cobwebs all over me. The muse comes to me when I'm working.
HW: How long does it generally take to complete a story from research to finish.
DM: A story or a novel? Stories can take as long as a month and more. Novels take about a year, although some have involved longer periods of time. CREEPERS is an exception. The idea for that seized me with such a passion and power that I worked 12 hours a day, completing it in three months. Then the rewriting began.
HW: What do David Morrell fans have to look forward to in the future?
DM: In a hush hush enterprise that I can only hint about because of the details of a contract I signed, I'm writing a major comic book project involving an extremely famous comic book character. When the company issues a press release, then I can talk about it. One of the approaches I'm interested in is that the hero will be treated seriously. Indeed the project is about what it means to be a hero. I'm hoping that readers will be tempted to cry at the end.
The father of the modern high-action thriller, David Morrell is the award-winning author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the Pennsylvania State University and taught in the English department at the University of Iowa.
"The mild-mannered professor with the bloody minded visions," as one reviewer called him, Morrell is the author of 28 books, which include such bestsellers as The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for a top rated NBC miniseries), The Fifth Profession, and Extreme Denial (set in Santa Fe, where he lives).
Noted for his research, Morrell is a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School for wilderness survival as well as the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security. Co-president of the International Thriller Writers organization, he is also an honorary lifetime member of the Special Operations Association and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He has been trained in firearms, hostage negotiation, assuming identities, executive protection, and defensive/offensive driving, among numerous other action skills that he depicts in his novels. With more than eighteen million copies of his books in print, his fiction has been translated into 26 languages.
You can visit David at his website at www.davidmorrell.net
Visit the CREEPERS website at www.theparagonhotel.com
See the CREEPERS Flash Presentation
