Lee Child | The Film That Lit My Fuse
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 >> What movie or series or book lit your fuse and
00:15 made you have to tell stories on the page and on screen?
00:20 >> Yeah, what a great question and
00:25 probably is gonna have a fairly humbling answer for me.
00:30 Because actually the thing that really wanted me to be in
00:34 the world of entertainment, which is really all I wanna do.
00:40 Being a writer is obviously part of that, but
00:44 I was not one of those kids who at the age of seven had five
00:48 page novels in composition books in my drawer.
00:54 I never conceived of being a writer.
00:56 What I wanted to do was to do that entertainment transaction.
01:02 And that really started when I was about eight years old with The Beatles.
01:07 I just loved The Beatles.
01:11 Not only for the music, but the joy, the energy, the promise of a future,
01:16 the promise of something that belonged to us rather than the previous generation.
01:22 And cuz in Britain it was a difficult thing.
01:26 Britain's experience in World War II was so
01:30 titanic that there was a sort of 20 year hangover after World War II.
01:37 Where we were told as kids that history had already happened.
01:42 All the good stuff was in the past.
01:44 And it was kind of difficult to argue with that because obviously a world war is
01:49 a gigantic thing and to have been victorious was huge.
01:53 But of course it was really depressing.
01:55 I was born nine years after the end of World War II and
01:59 my first memories are probably 12 years after it.
02:02 And I was coming up to the age of sort of seven, eight, nine,
02:06 feeling kind of depressed.
02:09 It was all over.
02:10 It was all in the past.
02:11 There was nothing for us, nothing ahead.
02:14 And The Beatles totally changed that for me.
02:16 It proved yes, there was something for us.
02:21 And on top of that, I was suffering from that thing that I have heard about
02:27 from numerous performers of various kinds, actors, comedians in particular,
02:33 I think, who were looking for the love and
02:37 approval they did not get as individual kids from their parents or families.
02:43 And of course, The Beatles were just the perfect antidote to that.
02:49 The hysteria amongst the audience, I thought, this is what I want.
02:53 I wanna do something that gives people joy and happiness, but
02:59 also gives me therefore back the love and approval from an audience.
03:03 So that was set in my head really from about the age of eight or nine.
03:08 And I didn't know how to do it or what to do, but
03:13 I knew that's what I wanted.
03:14 I wanted to be in that world with an audience.
03:18 How it happened, I didn't care.
03:21 But I started out in the theater, then I went to television,
03:24 then I went to writing books, but the proposition was always the same.
03:28 Do something that will make somebody else happy and
03:31 give me back some of the reflected glow.
03:35 >> And so I wondered, cuz what I remember about The Beatles when I was a kid
03:40 is that technically, precision wise, they were brilliant musicians
03:46 to the point where they couldn't hear their instruments.
03:49 But it was so drilled into them that they were flawless.
03:54 But they made those movies like Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine.
04:00 And I just thought that it somehow, I don't know, disarmed them and
04:05 made them accessible.
04:08 And so they weren't just these guys on a mountaintop,
04:11 they were just kind of these goofy Brits that you kind of loved.
04:15 I don't know if you were a fan of their movies.
04:18 >> I was a fan of everything, the movies, the publications,
04:24 the little fan magazines, I loved it all.
04:27 And you gotta remember back then that they were making it up as they went along.
04:32 They had the example of Elvis, who had been a big pop star and
04:36 then got into movies.
04:37 And they kind of thought that was possibly the way to do it.
04:40 They were inventing superstardom in a way that hadn't been around before.
04:45 So the movies were lovely.
04:46 I thought I loved Hard Day's Night, I loved Help.
04:50 But it was a bit of a blind alley for them.
04:54 They thought that was the inevitable next step, and it wasn't.
04:56 It was really just a parallel step.
04:58 But the other thing that I remain really super interested in is the 1960s.
05:06 We say that, but actually really it was so regional.
05:10 The 60s happened at different times in different places.
05:15 And really, the 60s overall didn't really happen until the 1970s.
05:21 And that's the humbling part of my answer,
05:24 because I try to remain open to everything, every new thing.
05:29 I try and keep up with it.
05:31 I try and learn from it.
05:33 But the honest answer is my fundamental influences are from that
05:38 classic decade from your mid-teens to your mid-20s,
05:43 which for me were the 1970s.
05:46 And in particular, I felt movies during the 70s were so distinctive.
05:52 >> Yeah.
05:53 >> Let's say you start out with M*A*S*H,
05:57 the movie, which I believe was late 1970.
06:01 That's a brave movie.
06:03 It's a bold movie.
06:04 Would not, could not get made today because of parts of the content and so on.
06:11 And then of course the classics, we had The Godfather,
06:16 The Deer Hunter, which to me taught me a lesson, which was that,
06:22 of course, those were movies with action, incident, suspense, life and
06:28 death stakes, all kinds of things going on in a classic thriller manner.
06:33 But they were patient.
06:35 The running time was long.
06:38 The scenes were played out as long as they needed to be.
06:42 There was no rush.
06:44 I mean, actually both those movies, Godfather and
06:47 Deer Hunter, start with wedding scenes that are expansive, patient.
06:56 I get the feeling that these days you would have to do those scenes in about
07:00 130 seconds, because of the way things are edited now and
07:06 the rush of you've got to have new, new, new.
07:12 It's something that I guess social media has inculcated amongst us,
07:18 that we need sensations coming thick and fast, one after the other,
07:23 very brief duration.
07:24 But those movies from the 70s, they played out as long as the scene needed to be.
07:30 And I became fascinated by that, the duality of it.
07:34 Yes, suspense, action, waiting for the next thing,
07:40 but doing it in a manner that was relaxed.
07:43 And so that was a lesson that I really carried forward.
07:47 I wanted to do both those things, a really urgent plot, but
07:52 a sensation of patience.
07:54 >> Because Reacher is really, he's that lone guy, he's that Clint Eastwood guy.
08:00 He said, was there sort of a North Star or a template for
08:05 that maybe came from the movies about who this guy was gonna be?
08:09 I mean, look, he owns a toothbrush.
08:11 When he's done with his shirt, he throws it out and gets another shirt.
08:15 I mean, they're very, very specific rules for Reacher.
08:19 And I just wonder, were there those sort of the strong silent types,
08:23 the Charles Bronsons,
08:25 who sort of were in your mind as you started writing that character?
08:30 >> For sure, I mean, by that point, I knew enough about the entertainment
08:36 business to know that you cannot draw up a laundry list of
08:42 specifications that you need.
08:44 I think that's totally fatal.
08:46 If you were to sit there and think, well, I need this and I need this.
08:49 And of course, I want women readers and I want young male readers.
08:53 And if you do it that way, it's dead, it's dead on arrival.
08:57 So you've just really got to trust your instincts.
09:00 So that's what I did.
09:01 I just metaphorically closed my eyes and typed, and Reacher is what came out.
09:07 And then of course the question is, okay, yeah, but where?
09:10 Where did he come from?
09:11 And you're right, it goes back to that ancient character,
09:15 the noble loner, the mysterious stranger,
09:18 who shows up in a place of danger and solves the problem and then moves out.
09:24 That's an essential part of the myth as well.
09:27 And I guess to be honest, I got that from the Lone Ranger on TV,
09:32 which was a real touchstone for me.
09:34 Because looking back on it, everybody in the world remembers the Lone Ranger.
09:41 Nobody in the world remembers one specific storyline.
09:46 It's always the character, the character is the appeal.
09:49 And that wandering hero has been around not for
09:54 just hundreds of years, but really thousands of years.
09:57 And so it's something that the human soul deeply craves.
10:02 We want that, we want help, we want uncomplicated help.
10:08 Everybody's got a problem.
10:11 I mean, maybe trivial, maybe really serious, but wouldn't it be great if some
10:16 strong silent person showed up at your door, solved the problem, and
10:21 then moved on so that you don't have gratitude issues afterward?
10:26 That's a huge part of the myth.
10:28 And so yeah, there's so much of that.
10:30 Plus, specifically, I loved the David versus Goliath story.
10:37 I had a picture book telling that story when I was a little kid.
10:42 I loved the story, but I was a huge Goliath fan.
10:46 I liked Goliath better.
10:49 And I was always annoyed that Goliath didn't win.
10:52 And I would keep reading this book somehow hoping he would win one time.
10:57 But he never did.
10:57 So when I came to writing Risha, not only did I want that noble loner,
11:02 but I wanted the huge guy, the guy that you could count on to win.
11:08 And it was a bit of an experiment.
11:10 Can you make suspense that way?
11:12 If it's pretty obvious, Risha is gonna win every physical contest,
11:16 probably every mental contest too.
11:19 Does that give you opportunity for suspense?
11:22 So it was experimental in that area, not being an underdog, being the overdog.
11:30 Can the overdog be the good guy?
11:32 Is there suspense in that story?
11:35 Yeah, but the one part of that myth that I always thought was great
11:40 was the fact that that big guy doesn't ask for anything.
11:43 Yeah, that's a really crucial point.
11:48 It's a kind of almost a noblesse oblige.
11:52 It's almost a sort of Marxism from he who has to he who needs.
11:58 And you don't expect to get praise for it or reward for it.
12:02 To quote a bad guy from the movies in A Few Good Men,
12:10 the Jack Nicholson character says, I don't want money, I don't want medals.
12:15 That is what those people want.
12:18 They just wanna do the right thing and they don't wanna reward for it.
12:21 Maybe it was a work of yours that was successful or
12:26 approval from someone who mattered to you.
12:29 What first gave you the confidence that you could create scenes in a book and
12:36 then later on that could work in a movie and
12:40 that could work now in a television series?
12:43 And I hope you'll indulge us and work in the fact that it sounds like a lot of
12:48 your motivation came from being laid off.
12:51 Yeah, that really was what it was.
12:55 And I don't think that anybody should ever say they're confident that they can do it.
13:01 My observation amongst people in various arts, writing definitely, TV for sure.
13:10 If you think you can do it, you'll probably fail because you can't be that
13:16 self-assured, it's always taking a risk, it's always taking a chance.
13:22 Even when you have a long run of successful books like I did,
13:26 20 plus books, I should have been theoretically complacent about it.
13:32 I should have said, yeah, I can do this.
13:34 But every new book is the same old struggle.
13:38 And you should never be overconfident.
13:41 If you don't feel that this one is awful, the worst thing you've ever done,
13:46 you're in a panic about it.
13:48 If you're not feeling that, then the book is gonna not work.
13:52 Somehow you need that insecurity to perform.
13:56 So, and I think another point that I learned is that you're writing a book,
14:03 if you've got half an eye on the eventual screenplay, be it for
14:09 the big screen or the small, then it's gonna be a bad book and a bad screenplay.
14:14 You just gotta do the book and then it becomes somebody else's problem to turn
14:19 it into the screenplay, which again is something I'm really convinced about.
14:24 You should never, ever adapt your own stuff because you need a certain kind of
14:29 brutality or callousness to rip it apart and put it back together again.
14:35 Almost impossible to do that with your own stuff because when you've written
14:39 the book, obviously every word is genius, otherwise why would it be there?
14:43 So how can you get rid of any of it?
14:45 It's very difficult to do your own stuff.
14:48 So I think the best thing for me was to write the book and
14:52 then somebody else has the problem of turning it into film or television.
14:57 And from what I've seen, they do a great job of it.
15:00 >> I wondered, and I read that at Granada you worked on things like
15:05 Prime Suspect, which was one of my favorite miniseries ever.
15:10 And then you had this thing where it all kind of went away.
15:16 So an extension to my question, there must have been some moment where you sat down
15:22 and you wrote this, you showed it to someone and
15:25 that person whose opinion mattered to you said, this is good.
15:29 >> Yeah, that's right.
15:32 I mean, I lost my job as you said, and I was really annoyed about it.
15:36 And so the anger and revenge aspects in the Reacher books
15:42 stemmed directly from that, that was me getting my own back.
15:46 And I remember in the first book, there's a line that said,
15:49 I tried it their way, now I'm gonna try it my way.
15:54 And that was the crucial feeling for me.
15:56 And I did, I wrote that first chapter of the first book in pencil on a legal pad.
16:03 And at that point, and it was a short chapter, only a few pages.
16:09 I gave it to my wife Jane and said, do you think it's worth continuing?
16:15 And she is not a natural thriller reader.
16:20 She prefers other types of literature.
16:24 So I felt this is gonna be the acid test.
16:28 Is she gonna say yes or no?
16:31 And she said, yeah, I like this, keep going.
16:35 And then when I finished it, I sent it to my brother Andrew,
16:39 who is the most like me, the person in the world most like me.
16:45 And also a big, huge thriller reader, read everything.
16:50 So his opinion was gonna be coming from a different direction, far more informed.
16:56 So I sent it to him and he said, yeah, this is really good.
16:59 So at that point, I thought, yeah, I've got enough confidence.
17:02 But since then, I really don't like showing stuff to anybody.
17:08 It's for the reader, it's for the people out there.
17:11 The opinion of other people prior to that doesn't really matter to me.
17:17 I wanna know what does the reader think?
17:19 Is the reader getting joy and pleasure out of this for
17:22 a couple of days during their hard life?
17:25 That's all I wanna know.
17:28 I don't care about reviews, I don't care about awards.
17:32 It's about the reader closing that book and thinking, damn, that was good.
17:36 That's all I need.
17:37 >> What would you say was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome to
17:43 allow you to turn these things that influenced you into your own language as
17:48 a writer?
17:48 >> It was, I was very aware of needing a kind of key or a way in.
17:56 I needed to find a crack in the door that would let me in.
18:00 And in the end, I found inspiration in two other movies, actually.
18:08 One again from the 70s, Days of Heaven, and I'll explain why in a minute.
18:13 And the other one was Dances with Wolves, which was a much later,
18:18 what was that, 1990?
18:19 >> Yeah, '90.
18:21 >> That was just a few years before I started writing.
18:23 But in that Dances with Wolves, the Kevin Costner voiceover parts,
18:30 I heard a smart guy, a resourceful guy, but
18:35 a silent man who is not accustomed to speaking.
18:40 There was a kind of halting delivery to his voiceover
18:44 that sounded a little bit inarticulate.
18:47 But it wasn't really inarticulate because he was not a dumb guy.
18:51 He was just used to being alone.
18:54 And similarly, in Days of Heaven, there is that voiceover
19:00 by the young girl that is used to bridge certain parts.
19:04 Again, a very inarticulate sounding but
19:09 hypnotically poetic type of voiceover that again comes from
19:14 a person not accustomed to narrating things.
19:18 And so I thought that is my key.
19:21 Reacher is this alienated loner.
19:24 He can go literally days without saying a word to another human being.
19:29 Therefore, talking is not what he's good at, not what he's used to.
19:35 So it enabled me to find that kind of halting delivery
19:40 that concentrated on short sentences or
19:43 even sentence fragments like a person would be thinking.
19:47 And that was the key for me.
19:50 It defined the style, it defined the approach.
19:53 That's what led me into the story, certainly what led me into the character.
20:00 And I found that to be absolutely the, it was like the magic key to the lock.
20:06 As soon as I figured that out, then it was great, off we go.
20:10 >> When you entrusted the movie rights the first time, so we have Tom Cruise,
20:16 and I know there was an outcry from your fans who say, what are you doing here?
20:21 Tom Cruise is, he's shorter than I am.
20:24 Your guy is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
20:27 And I think Tom is a terrific actor, and he sells it.
20:31 But what, looking back, made that decision okay and
20:37 the right one at the time?
20:39 >> Well, for me, it was, I probably underestimated
20:45 how negative that reaction would be.
20:49 Because in my mind, as the author of the book,
20:53 it was very clear to me that the book is the book.
20:57 And any adaptation of it for a movie or TV or whatever was a parallel version.
21:05 It didn't, it was not sequential.
21:07 It wasn't the book first, then the movie, somehow replacing the book.
21:12 It was a parallel comment, a parallel opinion on the book.
21:17 So I underestimated the passion with which people would
21:22 object to Tom Cruise on the physical level.
21:26 So what I was faced with was a decision at the time,
21:29 ignorant of the upcoming fallout.
21:32 I thought, yeah, no, Tom is just a great actor.
21:36 He is internationally probably the last of the great old-fashioned movie stars.
21:42 And for a book writer, I've got to admit it,
21:47 you've got half your mind on the promotional side of it for the books.
21:52 And so here was the world's biggest movie star, and they were gonna spend
21:57 hundreds of millions of dollars around the world promoting my brand.
22:02 And so I thought, yeah, that's a great deal.
22:06 And I did enjoy the movie.
22:09 It's the first movie in particular I thought was terrific.
22:12 But it did lack that physical component.
22:16 A reacher walks into a room, the temperature drops a little bit,
22:20 everybody's a little scared for a moment.
22:22 And the physical side did not come through in that sense.
22:28 So the movie was kind of missing something.
22:31 But of course, for people that came fresh to the movie, who hadn't read the book,
22:36 the movie stands alone.
22:38 And on its own terms, it's amazing, really good.
22:42 And Tom was lovely to work with, very, very interesting guy, very nice man.
22:50 And so I have no bad memories of that at all.
22:54 But the chance to change the actor was irresistible in a sense.
23:01 But also really the main thing was the running time.
23:06 A movie has maybe 90 minutes of content from my standpoint,
23:10 whereas a streaming season as currently configured, you've got eight hours,
23:16 sometimes 10 hours, sometimes 12 hours to tell the story.
23:20 That's just irresistible.
23:21 >> Yeah, that's true.
23:23 And also irresistible is when you get your Goliath, huh?
23:28 >> Yeah, because inside baseball, the financing is different.
23:34 With a feature film, really the actor is the person that attracts the investment.
23:39 And it's different in streaming television.
23:41 The platform provides the investment and
23:44 you've got a completely free hand, essentially, as to who you cast.
23:49 And we were very aware of that.
23:52 But it was a bizarre casting process because it was done during COVID,
23:57 where we couldn't all get together in a room like you normally do.
24:01 It was all done on Zoom, which I felt weird about at first.
24:06 But then I suddenly twigged, and I thought, no, wait a minute.
24:09 This is all that the viewer will ever see, this guy on the screen.
24:14 So this is how we must judge.
24:18 And I went nuts about it.
24:20 I said, I'm gonna judge on the first one second, because that's what I wanted.
24:24 I wanted somebody capable of stepping on the screen and
24:28 without saying anything or doing anything.
24:31 He had to just own that screen and be that guy.
24:36 And I knew instantly that, literally within that first second,
24:41 that Alan Richson was the guy.
24:44 And I was anticipating a kind of ridiculous argument with all the other
24:48 producers.
24:49 They're gonna be saying to me, what, you're basing this on one second?
24:54 But actually, everybody had the same opinion.
24:57 We were all looking for that same thing,
25:00 the instant impregnable dominance that the character must have.
25:06 >> Well, what is it that he did to make such a substantial first impression?
25:11 >> I felt that he was giving out a vibe of being three or
25:16 four moves ahead, which is exactly what Reacher needs.
25:22 Cuz that's who Reacher is.
25:24 He knows what's gonna happen in the next second and the next, and
25:27 he's a little unsure of what's gonna happen in the third second.
25:30 And I needed somebody who could just be that.
25:34 And Alan seemed to be able to do it.
25:37 And then later, when I got to know him, when we were on set and hanging out,
25:43 I found out that he had been, as a kid and a young adult,
25:46 he had been a chess champion.
25:49 I mean, a seriously good chess player.
25:51 And I thought, yeah, that's it.
25:55 Life is chess, and he is seeing three or four moves ahead.
25:59 That's what chess players do.
26:01 And he was bringing that to the screen, which I thought,
26:05 so many little seconds in the Amazon show,
26:10 Reacher is just waiting for everybody else to catch up.
26:14 And Alan does that so perfectly.
26:17 That doesn't show off about it.
26:18 It's not boastful.
26:19 He is just patiently waiting for everybody else to see what he already saw.
26:24 >> Yeah, and then he'll hear their wrong assessments and
26:28 deliver the accurate one.
26:30 >> Exactly, he'll explain it to them, yeah.
26:32 >> Yeah, which makes him kind of that perfect hero, because it's easy to
26:37 marginalize him because he's built like a middle linebacker, but
26:41 at the same time, he's smart like a middle linebacker too.
26:45 >> Yeah, he is, because the other huge influence on me,
26:50 I guess, as a kid was Sherlock Holmes.
26:53 The books and all the various movies and TV,
26:56 of which there must be hundreds by now.
26:59 And in fact, a Spanish journalist developed a nickname for Reacher,
27:06 which I thought was really smart, making jokes in a foreign language.
27:10 He calls Reacher Sherlock Homeless, which is perfect for that character.
27:16 (button clicking)