David Morrell

Intervista all'autore

1) What's your opinion of the fourth Rambo movie?

I'm happy to report that overall I’m pleased. The level of violence might not be for everyone, but it has a serious intent.
This is the first time that the tone of my novel FIRST BLOOD has been used in any of the movies. It's spot-on in terms of how I imagined the character—angry, burned-out, and filled with self-disgust because Rambo hates what he is and yet knows it's the only thing he does well. The character spends a lot of time in the rain as if trying to cleanse his soul. There's a nightmare scene involving vivid images from the three previous films (they indicate the emotional burden he carries). There's a scene in which Rambo forges a knife and talks to himself, basically admitting that he hates himself because all he knows is how to kill. At the start, Rambo is gathering cobras in the jungle, and he's so comfortable with them, it's as if, because of his past, the most developed part of him is his limbic brain. He has nothing to fear from another creature of death. In the cathartic violence of the climax, he uses a machine gun that evokes the way wounded William Holden uses a machine gun at the end of THE WILD BUNCH (one of my favorite films). Indeed much of RAMBO has Peckinpah overtones while it also uses tropes from the novel (again, for example, there's an exciting sequence in which Rambo is hunted by dogs).
Another excellent element involves the film's archetypal, mythic overtones. Rambo is hardly ever called by his last name. Instead, he keeps being referred to as "the Boatman" because he earns his living with a boat on a river in Thailand. But after he's called "the Boatman" enough, I start thinking of the River Styx and the journey of death as depicted in Greek myth. Similarly, the knife-forging sequence reminds me of Hephaestus, the armorer of the Greek gods (in the sequence, Rambo even talks about whether God can forgive him for what he's done). Sly is definitely sophisticated enough to embed these sorts of allusions. The earlier Rambo movies were a combination of a Tarzan movie and a western. That is also the case here. The knife (again designed by master blade-maker Gil Hibben), the bow and arrow, Rambo racing through the jungle—these scenes are primal and breath-taking.
Some of you sent me emails, suggesting that maybe a younger actor would have been better for the fourth movie. But it’s important to remember that Rambo (unlike James Bond) is specific to a historical period--the Vietnam War. My novel FIRST BLOOD was published in 1972. If Rambo were a real person, he would have been perhaps 22 at the time. In 2008, he would be 58. Sylvester Stallone is a few years older than that, but basically he is the correct age, and in the new movie, he interprets the character in an older way. That's one reason he put on the weight—so he would look different from the trim muscular image he had in the 1980s Rambo movies.
I think some elements could have been done better. The villains are superficial, to say the least. A lot could have been done with the connection between drug lords and the military in what the film calls Burma, dramatizing that money earned from the heroin trade motivates their ruthlessness. Instead, they’re merely depicted as psychopaths. In a baffling moment, heroin somehow gets equated with meth, which is something entirely different and has nothing to do with the poppies grown in that area of the world.
Otherwise, I think this film deserves a solid three stars. Even the NEW YORK TIMES treated it well, emphasizing the way the character is given depth. Rambo is no longer the jingoistic character of the second and third films. The most telling line of dialogue is, “I didn’t kill for my country. I killed for myself. And for that, I don’t believe God can forgive me.” While that statement is in keeping with my novel FIRST BLOOD, it’s jaw-dropping when compared with the dialogue in the second and third Rambo films.
Some posters list me as an associate producer. This is an error. I was not involved with the production, and this time around, I didn’t write a novelization for the movie. But I do receive two credits. One is a single card "created by" credit before the names of the screenwriters. At the end, after the final surprising, poetic, redeeming sequence, another credit says "From the novel FIRST BLOOD by David Morrell." Two credits aren’t the way Hollywood usually treats a novelist. The second reference seems to acknowledge that the series has returned to the tone of the original novel.
To say again, the violence is a solid R, but the intent is serious. I was blown away.

2) Who is Philip Young? What is AMERICAN FICTION, AMERICAN MYTH?

In 2000, I co-edited (with Sandra Spanier) a collection of essays by the noted Hemingway critic Philip Young, American Fiction, American Myth. Like Stirling Silliphant, Young was extremely important to me. In 1965, as an undergraduate English student at a small college in Ontario, Canada (St. Jerome's College at the University of Waterloo), I came across Young's book ERNEST HEMINGWAY. A Hemingway enthusiast, I was first attracted to the book because of its subject. But Young had such an engaging style and such interesting ideas that I instantly knew I had to study with him. So I went home and asked my pregnant wife if she would give up her job as a high-school history teacher and travel with me to the United States, where Young taught at Penn State. To my delight, she agreed. That was a life-changing moment. With most of our possessions crammed into a VW bug, we (and our newborn daughter) moved to the U.S. in 1966. Eventually I progressed from being a student in Young's classes to being his graduate assistant. After his first wife died, my wife and I helped him take care of his home and his grade-school-aged son so that he would have the freedom to teach and do research. He was like a second father to me. After Young died in 1991, I mentioned to his second wife Katherine that there were enough uncollected essays by him to fill a book. With Katherine's permission, I worked with another of Young's students Sandra Spanier, now a literature professor at Penn State, to arrange and edit the essays. We each wrote an introduction. Mine explains in detail how I fell in love with Young's prose and changed my life because of him. The book, which includes essays about Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald as well as American fiction and American myth, is published by the Penn State Press.

3) Where did you come up with the name Rambo?

In the early stages of composition, I struggled to find a strong name for the character. One afternoon while I was writing, my wife came home from a grocery store and said that she'd found a new kind of apple that she thought was delicious. Apples were the farthest thing from my mind while I struggled to find that character's name, but politely I took a bite of the apple and discovered that it was in fact delicious. "What's it called?" I asked. "Rambo," she replied. This was in Pennsylvania, where the Rambo type of apple is grown and appreciated. Instantly, I recognized the sound of force. It also reminded me of the way some people pronounce the name of a French poet I'd been studying, Rimbaud, whose most famous work is A SEASON IN HELL, which I felt was an apt metaphor for the prisoner-of-war experiences that I imagined Rambo suffering.
In my novel, the character had only the last name. Later, the scriptwriters for the movie gave him a first name "John," as in the Civil War song about a returning veteran, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

4) Why are you so indebted to the television series, ROUTE 66?

The story-telling event that made me want to become a writer was the premier of the classic TV show, ROUTE 66. I was 17, doing so-so in high school, lacking plans and ambition, going nowhere. But all that changed at 8:30 p.m. on the first Friday of October in 1960 when a drama about motion gave me a destination.
The series was about two young men (brilliantly portrayed by Martin Milner and George Maharis, the latter eventually replaced by Glenn Corbett) who drove a Corvette convertible across the United States in search of America and themselves. Providing a time capsule of 1960-64, every episode was filmed entirely on location–from Poland Springs, Maine, to Huntington Beach, California; from Seattle to St Louis to Tampa and a hundred communities between.
Two-thirds of the episodes were written by Stirling Silliphant, who eventually received an Oscar for IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and whose scripts for ROUTE 66 were an intriguing blend of intense action and philosophic/poetic speeches that sometimes lasted five minutes, with a flavor of Tennessee Williams combined with William Inge and Arthur Miller.
As a bonus, the great arranger-composer Nelson Riddle contributed a new musical score every week, often with a jazz flavor.
The series so knocked me over that I wrote to Silliphant, explaining my sudden ambition to follow his path. The long letter he sent in return gave me all the advice any writer needs. “Write, write, keep writing, and then write more.” That letter is framed next to my desk.
Eventually, he and I became friends and colleagues. In 1989, I was thrilled to see Stirling listed as the executive producer of my NBC miniseries, BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE. Twenty-nine years after ROUTE 66 debuted, a circle was completed, even as the road continued.

5) What's the background of your comic-book series, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN?

Athough Captain America is a superhero, I treated him as a real person. Those of you who aren’t familiar with his background need not worry. During the series, I provide the essential history, although Captain America experts will find that I looked at key incidents in a new way, exploring their psychological depths and trying to provide new insights into the character.
The theme is the burden of being a superhero in today’s troubled world, especially a superhero named after the United States. The story takes place in real-world Afghanistan and involves a Marine unit, in particular a Marine corporal named James Newman. Throughout the story, these words function as a constant refrain. “Courage, honor, loyalty, sacrifice.” Those are the military virtues, and in my opinion, the world would be a better place if all civilians practiced them. There’s action, of course, but there’s also a lot of emotion. There are also explicit references to 9/11 and later terrorist bombings in Madrid and London.
Every panel of every page was written by me. I described what happens in every image. I provided dialogue or a caption if the image required. I tried to keep the latter to a minimum because comic books are by nature a visual medium. The technique is stop-action storytelling, a little like story boards for a film. The average number of panels per page is six, but sometimes, I wanted only two and sometimes only one. Sometimes the image covers the top of two pages. I varied the number of panels, based on the type of image I wanted to emphasize.
A comic book begins on page 1. You need to turn the page to see page 2 and every other even-numbered page in the book. Each time you turn the page, I have the opportunity to surprise you. I frequently took advantage of that. For example, my script asked the artist Mitch Breitweiser and the colorist Brian Reber to make the early pages emphasize muted yellows, browns, and blues to show Afghanistan after a dust storm. Then a battle occurs. Bright orange and red are introduced. But only half-way through the first issue when Captain America finally appears (you need to turn the page) do we finally have eye-opening brilliant colors—the red, white, and blue of Cap’s uniform. I asked for a full page so that the character could have a grand entrance.
The artist Mitch Breitweiser then interpreted my script, adding various visual details to dramatize my description. For example, when Cap finally appears, he holds a helmet toward the viewer. On the helmet, there’s photograph of a young boy—Corporal Newman’s son. This is a brilliant touch that is Mitch’s. In the script, I only mentioned the helmet, not the photograph.
Marvel editor Andy Schmidt recruited me for the project and coordinated the artwork, coloring, and lettering, the latter by Cory Petit. As you can tell, there are many talents involved in producing a comic book. Andy left Marvel in July to be a stay-at-home dad, but he’s still involved in the comic-book world, and on his blog SHOOTING THE SCHMIDT, he posted a comprehensive essay about everything that was involved in getting CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN into stores.
It’s a wonderful essay that discusses how brilliant Mitch Breitweiser’s art is and how revolutionary Brian Reber’s coloring is. Here’s a link to the essay, which includes several pages from the first comic book.
http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=39;t=000271
I hope you agree that the pages look wonderful. But please remember that you won’t get an appreciation of the story unless you start on page 1.

6) How many books have you written?

In the BOOKS section of this website, you’ll find my personal descriptions of all my books (just click on the title). You'll also find a button that gives you access to a complete list of everything I’ve written along with citations for some of the articles that have been written about me. It’s very long, which isn’t surprising when you consider that I’m into my fourth decade as a writer. If you’re interested in the list, you might want to print it rather than strain your eyes reading it on a screen. Some of the magazines in which my stories and articles appeared are no longer in business. However, if you’re interested in a particular item, you can contact the Special Collections division of the library at the University of Iowa, where I used to teach. I send the U. of I. Library a copy of everything listed in my complete bibliography, including foreign editions. My collection there also includes various movie materials, including drafts of the script for THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE (by me and other writers) and numerous Rambo movie scripts that other writers prepared.

7) What's your opinion of the fourth Rambo movie?

Apart from FIRST BLOOD and its two film sequels, THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE was a four-hour NBC miniseries in 1989. Highly rated, it premiered directly after the Super Bowl and starred Robert Mitchum, Peter Strauss, David Morse, and Connie Sellecca. It was true to the novel and turned out very well, I think. I keep looking for it on cable TV, but it never seems to show up. I came across a commercial videotape of it and was alarmed to find that it was cut to 90 minutes and barely recognizable in terms of my book. A short story of mine, “But at My Back I Always Hear,” was filmed as an episode of the Showtime series THE HUNGER. An original teleplay of mine, “Habitat,” was produced for the syndicated TV series MONSTERS. A lot of other material has been optioned (which means a producer had a specified time period in which to try to get a production off the ground) or sold outright. These include TESTAMENT, THE TOTEM, THE FRATERNITY OF THE STONE, THE FIFTH PROFESSION, ASSUMED IDENTITY, EXTREME DENIAL, BURNT SIENNA, and CREEPERS. Michael Douglas’s production company was associated with EXTREME DENIAL and Pierce Brosnan’s with BURNT SIENNA. Even so, nothing happened. The politics and uncertainty of the film business are amazing. Of every hundred novels that sell to the movies, perhaps only one adaptation gets filmed. I’ve written several short stories about the movie business (see “Dead Image” in my collection BLACK EVENING and “Front Man,” which originally appeared in the anthology MURDER FOR REVENGE). I’ve also written a long chapter about the film business in LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING.

8) How did you get the idea for FIRST BLOOD?

In 1966, I was a Canadian who came to the United States to study American literature at Penn State. Vietnam was hardly mentioned in the news in Canada, so I had no idea what the war was about when my fellow graduate students became obsessed about it, partly because of fears that they'd be drafted. Penn State's English department required its graduate students to teach rhetoric, and in several of my classes, I encountered young men recently returned from the war who had a lot of trouble accepting me as an authority figure. We got to talking. I learned about their difficulties in adjusting to civilian life: nightmares, lack of sleep, depression, defensive reactions to loud noises, what we now call post-trauma stress disorder. By 1968, Vietnam was regularly mentioned on the TV network news, often with graphic images. Meanwhile, Civil Rights riots had begun and were destroying several of America's inner cities. These riots were in part related to the war inasmuch as impoverished Blacks had a lot more risk of being drafted than rich Whites did. I got to thinking that the images of the war weren't much different from the images of the riots. Eventually I decided to write a novel about a returning Vietnam veteran who brings the war to the United States. That's a short answer. A longer one can be found in my introduction to the Warner paperback of FIRST BLOOD. I also mention FIRST BLOOD at length in LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING. I did an audio commentary for the DVD of the movie and wrote liner notes for the RAMBO TRILOGY boxed set.

9) What made you decide to become a writer?

When I was seventeen, I was close to being a highschool dropout. My school’s principal told me that I’d never amount to anything. Then I happened to watch a new TV series that premiered in the fall of 1960. It was called ROUTE 66 and depicted the adventures of two young men driving across the United States in search of America and themselves. The series was filmed on location and had a mixture of action and intelligence that I fell in love with. Between fights and chases, many of the speeches went on for five minutes and referred to various authors and philosophies. I wrote to the show’s head writer Stirling Silliphant, asking how I could learn to do what he did. He sent me a long encouraging letter. The next thing I knew, I was burning with determination and never stopped wanting to tell stories. Years later, Stirling not only became my friend but (in a wonderful turn of events) was the executive producer of the miniseries of THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE. I’ve written at length about my indebtedness to Stirling and ROUTE 66. See my introduction to LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING as well as the memoir “The Road to Damascus” in BLACK EVENING.

10) Of the books you’ve written, what’s your favorite?

I’d have to rephrase the question and talk about the ones that are most important to me. These would be FIRST BLOOD because it was my first book and sent me on my way. The next would be THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE because it was my first national bestseller. Then, chronologically, would come FIREFLIES, which is about my fifteen-year-old son Matthew who died from the complications of bone cancer in 1987. That frank discussion of grief seems to have helped other people deal with similar losses. Then would come my summary of what I learned during my more-than-three decades as a writer: LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING. Finally, my favorite book is whatever one I happen to be currently working on.

11) What are your most collectible books?

Until THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE, my hardbacks didn’t have a large first printing. Thus the American first editions of FIRST BLOOD (15,000 copies), Testament (10,000 copies), LAST REVEILLE (7,000 copies), THE TOTEM (7,000 copies), and BLOOD OATH (5,000 copies) are hard to find. The British editions were comparably small. I’ve seen first editions of FIRST BLOOD sell for $300 and higher while the other books are sometimes priced between $50 and $100. On the other hand, I’ve heard of people finding copies for a couple of dollars at a garage sale. Looking for them can be amusing. See Ebay.com, Alibris.com, or ABEbooks.com. To my knowledge, there were no second editions of any of these novels, but please check on the copyright page to make sure. Every copy of the 1972 M. Evans FIRST BLOOD is a first edition, even though it doesn’t say on the copyright page. If it’s a book-club edition (noted on the flap where the price would normally be), it’s of limited value. The 1979 edition of THE TOTEM is rare for another reason besides scarcity. My editor and I disagreed about the manuscript. The published version contained my extensive and reluctant revisions. Years later, in 1994, I had the chance to see the original version published (it’s twice as long, with a different style and a different beginning and ending). That is the version currently in print. The specialty publisher Donald M. Grant (grantbooks.com) put out 5,000 hardbacks of THE TOTEM (COMPLETE AND UNALTERED) in a handsome volume that includes illustrations by Tom Canty. It is still available: a bargain at $24.95. Grant did an even more handsome, signed, limited edition of the book (1,000 copies), which had an oversized format, color illustrations, and an interesting lift-up tray case ($100). My introduction to the Grant editions and the Warner paperback explains THE TOTEM’s complicated textual history. I like both versions of the book (a comparison of the two will surprise you), but the longer one has scenes that I hated to lose. Grant also did a beautiful version of my Christmas fable for children and adults, THE HUNDRED-YEAR CHRISTMAS. This 70-page, oversized, colorfully illustrated hardback is easily my most attractive. There are only 600 copies. Each is numbered and signed by me and the artist R. J. Krupowitz (who died a few years after the book was published). THE HUNDRED-YEAR CHRISTMAS is no longer available from the publisher and is very hard to find. The going price, if you can find one, is around $100. Another specialty publisher Cemetery Dance (cemeterydance.com) did a fancy hardback of BLACK EVENING. Priced at $40, it has illustrations by Steve Gervais and is limited to 1,000 copies, all of them signed by me. Still available, this is the only American hardback, although the British publisher Headline did a hardback as well. A British publisher New English Library did the only hardback of my novelization for RAMBO III, which appeared everywhere in paperback. There may have been as few as 500 of these hardbacks, which were manufactured for libraries. I have no idea how much these rarities are selling for on the secondary market. Finally, Subterranean Press did a chapbook (another word for an impressive-looking pamphlet) of my essay about the difficulties I had writing TESTAMENT. It’s called TESTAMENT: THE UNPUBLISHED PROLOGUES and includes sections that did not appear in the published novel. There are only 250 of these, each signed by me and numbered. These originally sold for around $12. A more deluxe version was identified by the letters of the alphabet and sold for twice as much. Neither version is now available from the publisher. I’ve never seen them on the secondary market, so I have no idea of their current price.

12) Several of your books are dedicated to Philip Klass and William Tenn. Who are they?

When I went to Penn State to study with Philip Young, I met a fiction writer named Philip Klass (not to be confused with the UFO expert by the same name). Klass was the first professional writer I’d ever met. Under the name William Tenn, he had written numerous, admired science fiction stories in the fifties and was now teaching fiction writing at Penn State. I persuaded him to give me some instruction, but alas he hated the stories I gave him. He was right to hate them. I now realize how false and imitative they were. But with Klass’s help, I learned to look inward and write fiction that was distinctly my own, fiction that addressed the traumas of my past (I’d been abandoned in an orphanage, for example), fiction that dramatized the intense emotions I was still struggling to resolve. I am immensely indebted to Philip Klass/William Tenn. What he taught me is discussed at length in my preface to BLACK EVENING and in the early sections of LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING.

13) How much research do you do?

I love doing research. For a couple of reasons. First, I enjoy learning, so I often pick a subject that I’ve always been interested in but never had a chance to learn about. Thus, I expand my horizons, learning about such topics as photography (Double Image) or how to use egg yolks to make an artist’s paint (Burnt Sienna). The other reason I like to do research is that it adds authentic details to my fiction. Readers enjoy having inside knowledge. When I write about spies or soldiers or protective agents, I make a habit of receiving instruction from people who actually do what I only imagine. This research is especially important because I have never been in the military. During the Vietnam War, because I was a Canadian with a wife and an infant daughter, the military wasn’t an option. After FIRST BLOOD was published, soldiers from various elite military groups became fans. Some taught me some pointers. Later, in 1986, I attended the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security. This legendary three-week course was taught only three times. Its faculty consisted of former members of the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, US Marshals Service, the Mossad (Israel’s equivalent of the CIA), and so on. I became friends with some of these teachers. My novel ASSUMED IDENTITY was based on instruction I received about assuming identities. THE FIFTH PROFESSION and an up-coming novel THE PROTECTOR were based on instruction I received about how protective agents operate. I’ve had extensive firearms instruction as well as instruction in surveillance, electronic eavesdropping, hostage negotiation, industrial espionage, and a lot of other subjects, including anti-terrorist driving. The latter training occurred at the Bill Scott Raceway in West Virginia, where numerous government agencies send their operatives to learn what I call anti-terrorist driving. I learned how to run barricades, do 180 degree spins, and car fight at fifty miles an hour. I learned wilderness survival from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyoming. I’m also an honorary lifetime member of the Special Operations Association and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, whose members give me further opportunities to do research. For more information, see my chapter “The Importance of Research” in LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING.