Photo by Karen Vaisman Photography
Gregory Poirier is the author of the new novel A Thousand Cuts. He is also a screenwriter, director, and producer, and he lives in Los Angeles.
Q: What inspired you to write A Thousand Cuts, and how did you create your character Max Starkey?
A: The inspiration for the book came up when I was looking for my next movie idea. I like to give myself little challenges that help me develop ideas so I’m not just sitting around trying to come up with something out of thin air.
I’m a big fan of film noir, in fact my favorite of all the movies I’ve written, Knox Goes Away, is a noir. I was sitting there watching Out of the Past on Turner Classic Movies and I challenged myself to think of the movie that Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum would make today, with modern sensibilities and action but firmly rooted in noir and the kinds of anti-hero characters they played in the 1940s and '50s.
I had this idea a while back about a dictator in a third world country who is about to be toppled in a coup and has a bunch of gold he needs to smuggle out of the country before his regime falls.
I had never been able to figure out how to use it, but once I started thinking about it in terms of the parameters I had set for myself, the idea for A Thousand Cuts formed relatively quickly.
The character of Max Starkey also came from that challenge, of wanting to write something that James Cagney or Dick Powell would play if they were alive now.
I wanted a noir setup, so the idea of this ex-CIA guy, who used to be part of the system but left because of betrayal and heartbreak and is now eking out a living working for the mob, and then gets sucked back in by the very people who betrayed him and broke his heart, fit that mold very well.
Then I started putting together the building blocks of the character. Wanting him to be able to use his CIA skills led to the idea that he is a recovery man, who gets things back that are stolen from the mobsters he works for, usually, but not always, money.
Of course he’s very good at the game, and needs to be able to move through these dark, morally ambiguous situations where everyone is trying to screw over everyone else.
The idea of needing to think a few moves ahead of other people led to him being a ranked chess player, and chess became an integral part of the book.
Even though he is working for the mob and does a lot of unsavory things with unsavory people, he needs to have a moral center, so I decided to give him three rules that he lives by and anything goes as long as he doesn’t break those three commandments.
They are: never kill someone that wouldn’t kill you first; never keep the money unless you earned it; and never take a woman to bed who doesn’t have a say in the matter. That last one is basically a “no sex workers” rule, and the reason it is important to him becomes clear early in the novel.
Lastly, I knew that he left the CIA over betrayal and heartbreak, so he needed to be a romantic. A jaded one, but still. His ex-lover in the book says that Max needs love the way other people need air, and although he would deny it, it’s ultimately true.
Once I put all of those things in and shook them together, a pretty intriguing character emerged. I really like this guy.
Q: As someone who has done both, how would you compare screenwriting to writing a novel?
A: There are many similarities, but even more ways in which they are different. As I mentioned earlier, I originally thought of A Thousand Cuts as a movie, but when I started writing it, I had several false starts. There was a specific tone and voice that I was aiming for, and they just weren’t getting across in the script.
Screenwriting has very limited tools; all you can put on the page is what you see, and what you hear. You have to find interesting visual ways to impart character, because there is no internal monologue. You can’t say “he’s a sad guy because…”, you have to show it somehow.
So after some inspiration from a couple of friends, I decided to try writing it as a novel, and I’m really glad I did. I loved the internal monologue, being able to delve into my characters’ pasts and the events that shaped them into who they are today.
Unless you are using flashbacks, you can’t do that in a movie, at least not this kind of movie. That goes for description and action too.
Movies are written as if they are happening right now, in the present tense. “He runs down the alley; he pulls his gun; he kisses her.” In a book, that can become three tense, exciting pages about what he was going through and how much he wanted to kiss her as he ran down the alley and pulled his gun.
You also have more freedom to play in a book. Things that might be a moment in a movie can become whole subplots in a novel, and characters who might be an extra in the movie can have a chapter written about them.
One of my favorite runners in the book was unplanned, it just kind of spontaneously happened, and now I can’t imagine the book existing without it. It would never have made it into a script.
Another way they differ is that in a book you have the advantage of speaking directly to your reader. Film is a collaborative art and your words go through a lot of other people before they reach the audience.
One of the first things they teach you in screenwriting school is, “don’t try to direct the movie on the page." Just write down what the characters do and say, and the director, actors, editors, and studio execs will take it from there. In a book you speak directly to your reader, for better or worse.
Finally, I love that you write a book, and there’s the book. When you write a script, even one a studio is paying you to write, there is no movie and maybe there never will be.
You’re not done when you finish writing, you’re at the beginning of a long process, waiting to see if you can get a movie star to read it, trying to attach a director. A finished script is a long, long way from a movie; it can take years.
My standard line is that when I’m in a movie theater and the lights go down and the studio logo comes up on the screen, I lean over to my wife and say, “You know, this movie might actually happen.”
You might sell a lot of copies of your novel or you might not, but hey, there’s your novel. It exists, exactly how you want it, simply because you made it.
Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: A lot of the research during the actual writing process was technical, what I call guns, maps and vehicles. I did research things like the prison in Laos where some of the action takes place, and a lot about flora and fauna.
But some of the heavy research took place years before I wrote this. I have been to Langley and met with several CIA officers and Secret Service people, for a movie that I was working on that never got made. And I have traveled a lot in Southeast Asia, just for fun.
So in a way I had done most of the deep background work long before I wrote the book.
It’s funny how the little things sometimes stick with you; when I was at Langley I learned that there is a Starbucks in the lobby, but the baristas are not allowed to ask you your name or write it on a cup; it’s Langley, after all. For some reason I just thought that was cool and put it in the book.
Q: The novel is set in Southeast Asia--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: It’s extremely important. A lot of my personal experiences from traveling in the region made it into the book, albeit in altered form.
I hate to use a cliché, but I do believe the setting is another character in your story and needs to be chosen carefully. It informs everything that happens. Hauling 4,000 pounds of gold through hot, wet, dangerous jungle is a lot different than hauling it through the desert, or over the Alps. I wanted that feeling of being suffocated, of everything closing in on Max from all sides, and that’s the jungle.
That being said, I ultimately decided to set the book in a fictional country and not a real one. I invented a tiny nation called Suryaka, wedged in somewhere between Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.
There are a lot of ugly political realities in Laos and particularly Myanmar that I didn’t want to deal with, and Thailand reveres their monarchy and I didn’t want to insult them by pretending they didn’t exist, so a fictional country was the best option.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: The sequel to A Thousand Cuts, also featuring Max Starkey and titled The Thirsty Sand, is with my publishers now. I have three or four movies in various stages of prep, but honestly I want to focus on novels as much as possible. This wasn’t a sidetrack for me, this was a career pivot.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just that I really hope readers enjoy the experience. I’m an avid reader and often find myself thrilled, delighted, and bleary-eyed at three a.m., telling myself, “Just one more chapter.” If even one person has that experience with A Thousand Cuts then I have done my job.
The book is available wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and indie bookstores.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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