In 1974 he approached Westlake with the suggestion of an interview conducted by mail. Intrigued by the unusual experience of being interviewed by a prisoner, Westlake agreed.—Ed.
NUSSBAUM: Now that you have seen several of your creations transferred to film, do you subscribe to the auteur theory, or are you one of those wise-ass scribblers who refuses to acknowledge the artistic superiority and creative transcendence of the director? (Answer by mentioning two American and two foreign directors, one of whom must be French; and relate their work to the young Orson Welles and the imitative product of Peter Bogdanovich. Use more than one sentence if necessary.)
WESTLAKE: I love your question. Remember the scene in The Third Man where Joseph Cotten, the writer of westerns, is posing as a literary-type lecturer? He’s asked a question about James Joyce. If you can find a still of Cotten’s face when he’s reacting to the question, you’ll have my answer to you, sir. But I might have some additional things to say, so why not start a new paragraph and see?
I subscribe basically to the theory that a movie is not the book it came from, and in almost every case it shouldn’t be the book it came from. I have never adapted one of my own novels to the screen. Movies are a different form, they require different solutions. A new head will see the necessary changes a lot faster. I have written three original screenplays, one of which actually became a movie—Cops and Robbers—and which in the movie biz is a damn good percentage. After the Cops and Robbers screenplay was finished, I filled it out and made a novel out of it, but I have never wanted to go the other way. Screenplays are very confined, limited to the surface of things, limited in a thousand ways. A screenplay is just an outline with dialogue.
The responsibility for a movie is not as easy to define as the responsibility for a novel; I am responsible for the novel Cops and Robbers in a way I could never be responsible for the movie version. The auteur theory is simplism for eggheads. There are two kinds of people in the world: the dummies who think the actors make up their own lines and the sophisticates who know the director did it. In Cops and Robbers I am responsible for most, but not all, of the storyline; however, I wind up responsible for very, very few of the details along the way.
Let me give you one small example. In one scene in Cops and Robbers, two mobsters are being interrogated by cops at typewriters. The emphasis was on one of the mobsters who was being introduced as a major character; however, the other mobster and the cop interviewing him were not ordinary actors, no, sir. The cop was a real honest-to-god New York City plainclothes detective, and the guy playing the mobster was a real-life Cadillac dealer and no stranger to the bent life. They brought a choreography to that scene that I couldn’t have invented and the director couldn’t have invented, either. And it was somebody else entirely who thought to have the mobster give his occupation as “wholesale meat,” so the cop could look at him and say, “A butcher?” And I’m talking here about the secondary characters in the scene; so, in that three-minute segment, who’s the auteur?
There are directors who write their own scripts, and who have a total inner vision of the movie form in front plus the strength to make it happen the way they see it. Bergman, Fellini, probably Woody Allen. There are directors who enforce their own craziness, or determination, or whatever on other people’s material (and who consistently choose the same type of material) like Hitchcock. But if I told you you were about to see a Richard Fleischer film, what would you expect to see? How about Robert Wise? William Dieterle? Norman Jewison? Tony Richardson?
No one individual is ever totally responsible for a movie. Auteur theory people, frightened by complexity, wind up singing the praises of a lot of traffic cops. The director, because he’s there when the thing is being shot and is in charge of filming and editing, has a chance to be responsible to a greater extent than the screenwriter, if he has the strength and desire.
NUSSBAUM: How many books have you written? Had published? Do you care whether your pen names are known, or are they simply a device to signal the reader what to expect?
WESTLAKE: I have written about eighty books, seventy-six have been published. I don’t mind telling you about fifty: twenty-one Donald E. Westlakes, twenty Richard Starks, five Tucker Coes, an Ace paperback science fiction novel called Anarchaos by Curt Clark, a fat political suspenser called Ex Officio by Timothy J. Culver (paperback title, Power Play), a children’s book called Philip by D. E. Westlake, and a Hailey-type parody called Comfort Station by the vibrant J. Morgan Cunningham. The pen names are simple brand names, used to differentiate the types of books. I don’t mind owning up to them.
NUSSBAUM: With all the books you’ve written, you must really burn up your word machine. What do you consider a good day’s output? A bad day’s output? Reason to rejoice?
WESTLAKE: I have no sensible way to define my output. Pity Him Afterwards was written in eleven days. The last book I did, which really should have been easier, took five months. When I was writing the books about which I will not speak, I had a set schedule of fifteen pages or five thousand words a day for ten days, at which time the book was finished no matter what the characters thought. If I work every day from the beginning of a book till the end, my production rate is probably three to five thousand words a day—unless I hit a snag, which can throw me off for a week or two. But if I work every day I don’t do anything else, because everything else involves alcohol; and I don’t try to work with any drink in me, so in the last few years I’ve tended to work four or five days a week. But that louses up the production two ways: first in the days I don’t work, and second, because I do almost nothing the first day back on the job. This week, for instance, I did one or two pages Monday, five pages Tuesday, five Wednesday, fourteen Thursday, and three so far today.
NUSSBAUM: When do you write?
WESTLAKE: During my second marriage I used to yell, “I’m sick of working one day in a row!” But you can’t yell that at a girlfriend. I work afternoons and nights, with no schedule, no set time, no set output, no discipline of any kind. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Today it didn’t.
NUSSBAUM: Your Westlake books are (except for early work) well-known for their humor, and Richard Stark’s Parker series is every bit as violent and kinky as the Bible. Why do you think they’re popular?
WESTLAKE: I’ll tell you a funny thing. In the early sixties, when the first Parkers came out in paperback, Richard Stark got a bunch of fan mail. (The Westlake books had gotten practically none.) And almost all of that fan mail was from inner-city urban black males. I think what they liked about Parker was that he had chosen to reject society, rather than the other way around. He was the prowling outsider, but it hadn’t been forced on him. Or maybe not.
That fan mail trickled out in the late sixties, by the way, and now all I get is sheriff’s assistants in Nebraska telling me I got the guns wrong.
NUSSBAUM: I have noticed over the years that you seem to have been playing musical chairs with publishers, jumping from one to another quite frequently. Was this your idea? Your agent’s? The publishers’?
WESTLAKE: Everybody’s. The first jump was from Pocket Books to oblivion for Richard Stark in 1965. Pocket Books underwent an editorial shift and dropped their entire line of original crime books. Unfortunately, I’d just finished the ninth book in the Parker series and made the book about Grofield, a secondary character, not Parker. Well, I couldn’t very well peddle the Parker series elsewhere with a book in which Parker didn’t appear, so the Grofield series was born at Macmillan. Parker finally found a home at Fawcett Gold Medal a couple of years later, but none of us were ever happy with one another, and after four books we quit by mutual agreement.
Meanwhile, Richard Stark did three Grofield books for Macmillan, during which time I worked with four editors there. With these three, an anthology with Phil Klass (William Tenn) and Up Your Banners, I had five books published with Macmillan, and not one of them ever came out when the editor who’d bought it was still working there. So
Grofield’s fourth excursion went to World, where there was a pleasant editor named Jim Wade. He is still there, though I haven’t done any more Grofields.
Back to Westlake. There came the point when Random House (which had published my first eleven books and was already doing the Tucker Coes) had to decide whether or not to extend a little more for me or not. My agent put them into a competitive position with Simon & Schuster, who promised me the world and the stars and the moon, and Random House dropped out of the bidding, though Coe stayed there and later the Parker series went there. (Parker is still there. Lee Wright, the woman editor at Random House, is the top of the pyramid in the mystery field and has been ever since she started Inner Sanctum at Simon & Schuster back in the thirties.) S&S turned out not to have the moon and the stars, nor much of the world, and after five books we skedaddled (that’s not the editorial we, that’s my agent and I) to M. Evans, where I’m just so happy I skip and dance and go tra-la-la all day.
Paperback reprint is another matter entirely, over which I have little control.
NUSSBAUM: How many of your books have been made into films?
WESTLAKE: Nine.
1. The Hunter, Richard Stark—Point Blank, 1967, screenplay by Alexander Jacobs and David and Rafe Newhouse, directed by John Boorman, produced by Judd Bernard and Robert Chartoff (a Judd Bernard-Irwin Winkler production), MGM.
2. The Outfit, Richard Stark—The Outfit, 1973, screenplay and direction by John Flynn, produced by Carter DeHaven, MGM.
3. The Score, Richard Stark—Mise à sac (Pillaged), 1967, screenplay by Claude Suatet and Alain Cavalier, directed by Cavalier, produced by Georges Dancigers, Georges Laurent, and Alexandre Mnouchkine, UA (never released in the U.S.).
4. The Jugger, Richard Stark—Made in USA, 1966, screenplay and direction by Jean-Luc Godard, produced by Georges de Beauregard and Clément Steyaert Rome-Paris films (not yet released in the U.S. because I had to sue them intercontinentally).
5. The Seventh, Richard Stark—The Split, 1968, screenplay by Robert Sabaroff, directed by Gordon Flemyng, produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, MGM.
6. The Busy Body, Westlake (at last!)—The Busy Body, 1967, screenplay by Ben Starr, directed and produced by William Castle, Paramount.
7. The Hot Rock, Westlake—The Hot Rock, 1972, screenplay (a damn good one, better than the movie) by William Goldman, directed by Peter Yates, produced by Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts, Twentieth-Century Fox.
8. Bank Shot, Westlake—Bank Shot, 1974, screenplay by Wendell Mayes (yech!), directed by Gower Champion (yech!), produced by Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts, UA.
9. Cops and Robbers, Westlake—Cops and Robbers, 1973, screenplay by Westlake (actually, because it’s an original, the credit line reads, “written by”), directed by Aram Avakian, produced by Elliott Kastner, UA.
NUSSBAUM: Who starred in the French films, Mise à sac and Made in USA?
WESTLAKE: Mise à sac—cast list in Variety, my only source—Michel Constantin, Daniel Ivernel, Franco Interlenghi, Irene Tunc, Paul Le Persen. Because the characters’ names were changed to French names, I don’t know who played what.
Made in USA—Parker was played by Anna Karina. A friend of mine, referring to this and Lee Marvin (Point Blank) and Jim Brown (The Split), said, “So far, Parker has been played by a white man, a black man, and a woman. I think the character lacks definition.”
NUSSBAUM: What is your problem with Godard? Don’t you feel a little sheepish for causing trouble for an internationally acclaimed cinematic genius? Have you no respect for your betters? Or do you think fingers should be slapped whenever Fate or Justice decrees?
WESTLAKE: My problem with Godard is that he let himself be put in the middle. A French producer named Beauregard wrote my agent asking to buy movie rights to a Richard Stark Parker novel called The Jugger, which happens to be the worst book I ever wrote under any name. Maybe the French version was different. Anyway, we sold it to him for $16,000, in eight monthly installments of two grand, and one failure to pay would revert the rights to me. Meantime, Beauregard had put all his money into a movie either about a whore becoming a nun or a nun becoming a whore, I’m not sure which, and when he was finished the French government told him he couldn’t (a) show it in France, or (b) export it. Which didn’t leave much of a market. He didn’t say anything to us, ask for extensions or anything; he just disappeared after making three payments.
Time passed. A girl I know who was living in Paris wrote to say she’d seen my movie. What-what? Correspondence ensued, and here was this movie called Made in USA, and Godard had said in an interview in a French cinema magazine that it was based on a thriller by Richard Stark. What had happened, Godard had been making Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and to help out his old friend Beauregard, who was financially strapped, Godard took my book—which he thought was Beauregard’s property—and in twelve afternoons made Made in USA. (If you see it, you’ll wonder what he did the last three afternoons.) Godard had changed things around so much that Beauregard may have figured the film could be considered an original, but he didn’t tell Godard, who innocently blabbed.
Now comes the lawsuit. An intercontinental lawsuit, taking three and a half years, at which I win, hands down. Absolutely. Because Beauregard is still broke, there’s no financial restitution possible, so we hold out for North American distribution rights. (We’d blocked the film’s showing in the United States for just that reason.) Fine. The French court awards it to us. However, the film is partly Godard’s copyright. The movie can’t be shown without my permission, but it can’t be shown without his permission, either. And he won’t sign. He isn’t holding out for more money or anything like that; he just doesn’t like those fat American capitalists dumping on his sweet friend Beauregard.
NUSSBAUM: Besides Cops and Robbers, Elliott Kastner has put together some very successful projects. In discussing the picture, you didn’t characterize Kastner. Was this because you fear a slander suit? Love him like a brother and don’t want to bandy his name about? Or think you may be able to swindle him again if you keep your cool?
WESTLAKE: Elliott Kastner is a living legend. Seriously. When producers sit around to shoptalk, they tell Elliott Kastner stories. I will tell you about him. I was here one day, at my typewriter, and the phone rang. “Hello, I’m Elliott Kastner, calling you from my office in London. I think the world is ready for another Rififi, and I think you’re the man to write it. Why don’t you send me a letter with an idea or two?”
I had never written anything for the movies, not really, and I had no idea who this nut was. I asked around, and he had produced Harper, among other movies, and I know Bill Goldman, who wrote the screenplay for Harper. I called Bill and asked him about Kastner, and he said, “Did anybody else call you like that?” “No,” I said, “he’s the first.” “That’s Elliott,” Goldman said. “You’re about to be hot, and he’ll know it before anybody else.” Goldman also told me that Elliott was not a movie producer, but that he was a packager, and that his projects got made.
In writing books, of course, what you do is more important than how often you’ve done it, but in writing screenplays a credit is better than no credit at all. That you’ve written a piece of shit that got made is one up for you; that you’ve written three beauties that have not been made is three down for you. If a producer gets his projects made, what more can you want from the man? So I put together a story idea and sent it to Kastner, and he phoned and said no.
Then he said an associate of his, Jerry Bick, was coming to New York, so why didn’t we talk? So Jerry Bick and I met, and we talked about how New York looked worse to Bick every time he came back from London, and the idea of Cops and Robbers was born.
At first Michael Winner was going to direct—Winner co-produces his films, and thus Kastner wouldn’t have to pay him anything in front—but Winner’s prior commitments elsewhere got in the way, and Kastner scrounged around and came up with Aram Avakian, who had had a reputation for being
difficult just long enough to be hungry enough to not be difficult. (I’ll wait for you to work your way through that sentence. Ready? Onward.) So he got Aram on the cheapo, and meanwhile United Artists—whose pocket Elliott was picking this time—had bought Lenny for Dustin Hoffman, leaving the Broadway star of Lenny, Cliff Gorman, up for grabs. Why not get Gorman, too? Since he wasn’t coming with Lenny, he, too, was cheap; an Emmy winner cheap. (Do you suppose the pyramids were made this way?) I don’t know how Joe Bologna got into it, maybe it was the first time his wife let him out of the house alone. Elliott, having assembled this square-wheeled package, disappeared, returning the night of final shooting to pat everybody’s back, smile nervously, and depart again.
I heard this exchange of dialogue between Elliott and another producer at dinner one night: Other producer: “You ever get that tax problem straightened out?” Kastner: “All but a hundred fifty thousand of it.” I wish I could write dialogue like that.
Early in our relationship, Kastner said these two sentences to me in a row, very earnestly and seriously: “I’ve made seventeen pictures in six years. I’ve never made a picture I didn’t care deeply about.” St. Francis of Assisi couldn’t care about seventeen pictures in six years.
One last thing about Elliott: I like him.
NUSSBAUM: Is there a filmmaker whom you esteem greatly?
WESTLAKE: No. John Huston wrote and directed two of the best movies ever made, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon, but look what he’s done to us lately. His last picture that was any good was Beat the Devil, and there’s a picture to drive auteurs mad: Capote inventing the screenplay on the set. Lorre being told one day there hadn’t been time to write his dialogue for the scene, so just go in there and pretend to be somebody who has to stall those people in that room, and so on, and so on. Beat the Devil was in 1954.
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