'Quarry' comes to Cinemax: Max Allan Collins discusses the page-to-screen transition
By Dave Walker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
MAC: I've done one script for this season, and they've shown me the scripts all the way along. I've read all eight scripts. I have a very good feel and sense of what they're up to. I'm very pleased with what I see. I think thematically they're right on target.
Graham and Michael have been so terrific to me, and have been such believers in the source material. That's been important. But they also brought in Greg Yaitanes who is directing all of the episodes. He's a guy with impeccable credentials, and they're mounting a really great production, I think.
"Quarry," a Cinemax noir drama currently in production in New Orleans, was born four decades ago and far upriver from its TV setting. The series stars Logan Marshall-Green ("Prometheus") as Mac "Quarry" Conway, a Marine who returns home to Memphis from Vietnam in 1972 and makes his way back into civilian life as a hit man deployed by a mysterious character known as The Broker, played by Peter Mullan ("Olive Kitteridge").
Other cast includes Nikki Amuka-Bird ("Luther"), Damon Herriman ("Justified"), Jamie Hector ("The Wire"), Edoardo Ballerini ("Romeo Must Die") and Skipp Sudduth ("Ronin").
Author Max Allan Collins created Conway in the early 1970s while still a graduate student at the University of Iowa, and has revisited the character intermittently ever since in a series of "Quarry" books that sometimes bounce back and forth through time. Publication of "The Last Quarry," for example, preceded "The First Quarry."
Still Iowa-based, Collins is an incredibly prolific author who has penned multiple novel series, comic strips and screenplays. He also has produced dozens of screen-to-page novelizations for films and TV series. His graphic novel "Road to Perdition" was developed into the 2002 film of the same title, starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. He has directed indie films and collaborated with Mickey Spillane on the comic book series "Mike Danger."
Tom Sizemore starred in "The Last Lullaby," a 2008 film adaptation of the "Quarry" tale. The screenplay, written by Collins, stripped the project of references to the book series, preserving the characters and stories for what would become the Cinemax adaptation.
I spoke by phone with Collins the morning after "Quarry's" March 30 production start in the Crescent City. In the first part of our three part Q&A, we talked about the origins of the Quarry character. In part two, we discussed the books' transition from page to screen. Part three is about the 1970s time period the series, and some of the books, is set in.
Here's part one of the edited Q&A:
Q: What are the origins of this character?
A: I was in college, attending the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. I had grown up really wanting to write very traditional what used to be called hard-boiled -- and they now call noir -- fiction, reading Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and so on. But the times obviously in the late 1960s and early 1970s were very different than they'd been in the 1930s and 1940s. That form was seeming like maybe it was inherently anachronistic, so I set about to try to do that kind of story in a context that was then contemporary -- the context of the Vietnam War, hippies, the Democratic Convention in '68, the assassinations -- all those kinds of turbulent things that were inherently tied to that era.
"Quarry" was actually part of my MFA. It was a book I began, and one of the things was to demonstrate that a novel of that kind could be written in a contemporary fashion, and also that it would not necessarily have to take place in New York or Los Angeles, which is where pretty much all that kind of fiction used to take place. I set mine in the Midwest, because that's where I lived. "Quarry" was somewhat based on a friend of mine who did a number of tours in Vietnam who I was very close to and who had had experiences similar to what the Quarry character had.
It was also an attempt for me to comment on Vietnam through crime fiction. Now, of course, the irony of this is that I'm old enough that the things I did that were contemporary at the beginning of my career are now period pieces. One of the things I was delighted about when Graham Gordy and Michael D. Fuller contacted me about this was that they wanted to do "Quarry" in period. They wanted to set this in the early '70s.
Many of the times I've been contacted over the years about "Quarry," they've just sort of grabbed on to the hit man idea and just sort of assumed it was contemporary.
Was the Sizemore movie contemporary or period?
It was contemporary. I did not allow them to use the Quarry name because I wanted to hold onto that. This is the first time I've allowed the Quarry name to be used in this fashion. That movie was based on a book called "The Last Quarry," where he's much older and at the end of his career. It was contemporary but still in sync with the early books, because he's very young in the early books.
He's college-age himself, basically.
Yes.
I have a confession. I tried to do as much research as I could quickly before this interview, so I went to the library and thought, "Well, I better start with the first one," so I checked out the one called "The First Quarry."
(Laughter.)
We can talk about that, about how that happened, if you'd like.
That's a good idea. It threw me.
It can be convoluted, so I will do it as quickly as I can. The first book was called "Quarry," and has actually appeared under another title. It was originally called "The Broker." It was kind of designed to be a one-shot book. And then when my agent sold it in 1974, they wondered if he could be a series character. I said, "Yeah, I think I can do that." (Laughter.) Because of course I would want to write some more books.
And that became something fairly significant, because Quarry was the first hit man to helm a series like that, to be the star of a crime series. So he gained some significance just on that. And I did four books, three more, and they didn't ask for any more. They were published as paperback originals, and I moved on and went on with my career. And then somewhat unbeknownst to me they began to build a cult reputation. In the 1980s, I was asked by a publisher to do another one, and then I wrote occasional short stories about him over the years.
There's a company called Hard Case Crime whose specialty is to do retro-looking paperbacks. They do covers that invoke the kinds of books that I read that made me want to do this kind of story.
I'm looking at "The First Quarry" Hard Case cover right now.
So you know what I'm talking about.
Great cover.
I was approached and asked if I would consider doing another "Quarry." This was probably, I'm going to guess, 2004-2005, something like that. I actually requested a specific cover artist. I said, "I will if you get me this cover artist." (Laughter.) "I want this guy's cover on my book." It's a guy named Robert McGinnis, and he did not do "The First Quarry" cover you're looking at.
He is a very famous artist in this area and had done things like the early James Bond movie posters. You know, "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice." He's very iconic. He's still alive. He's in his 90s. So I said, "I'll do one if you get me Robert McGinnis," just in that off-handed kind of way. I got a call back. "Yes, McGinnis will do the cover."
And then I thought, "Well, this is an opportunity to take this thing that I started when I was a kid" -- and you apparently can't kill it with a stick, it just keeps coming back and coming back, the books have been reprinted several times over the years -- "(and) complete a series."
So I did this book "The Last Quarry." And then something else unexpected happened. It did real well. We were reviewed in Entertainment Weekly and a bunch of places that don't normally notice that kind of book. The editor at Hard Case, a guy named Charles Ardai, came to me and said, "Are you sure you want to finish this series?" I said, "Well, that's the last book. I don't want to do any more after the last book, but how about if I do a book called, 'The First Quarry?'"
(Laughter.)
I thought I'd go back, since the series had kind of been cut off early in the mid-1970s, (and) explore these other years. And specifically to explore the stuff that had to do with the character The Broker, and a lot of the material that they're doing on the TV show.
The "Quarry" Novels
"Quarry," a Cinemax noir drama now in production in New Orleans, is based on the character Mac "Quarry" Conway (played by Logan Marshall-Green), anti-hero of author Max Allan Collins' dozen novels.
"Quarry's Choice" (2015)
"The Wrong Quarry" (2014)
"Quarry's Ex" (2011)
"Quarry in the Middle" (2009)
"The First Quarry" (2008)
"The Last Quarry" (2006)
"Quarry's Greatest Hits" (2003)
"Primary Target" / "Quarry's Vote" (1987)
"The Slasher" / "Quarry's Cut" (1977)
"The Dealer" / "Quarry's Deal" (1976)
"The Broker's Wife" / "Quarry's List" (1976)
"The Broker" / "Quarry" (1976)
Source: MaxallanCollins.com
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Author Max Allan Collins created Mac Conway in the early 1970s while still a graduate student at the University of Iowa. The character lived first in a series of "Quarry" noir-fiction books, and now is being made into a Cinemax TV series starring Logan Marshall-Green ("Prometheus").
Production on "Quarry's" eight episodes launched in New Orleans on March 30. The next day, I spoke with Collins by phone. In part one of the interview, we discussed the character's creation. To open part two of the interview, I asked Collins about how the book series came to TV. In part three, we discussed the 1970s time period in which the series, and some of the books, are set.
Here's part two of the edited Collins Q&A:
Q: You've worked on both ends of the page-to-screen transaction in very interesting ways. You go into something like this with your eyes wide open. You've had your writing converted to the film, and you've taken the writing the other direction as well from film and TV projects. How did this project come about, and what was it about this that got you excited about it?
A: I've been contacted a lot of times on "Quarry," and we did do a feature, though as I said, I did not allow them to buy the series. I said, "You can do one movie based on it," and I wrote the screenplay.
What happened was, I was approached by Graham Gordy and Michael D. Fuller, and they just wanted to talk to me on the phone, and they just seemed so sincere about their interest in "Quarry," and they seemed to be so steeped in the novels.
They'd read them and they knew them in a way that I could just tell they weren't faking it. They really knew this material, and they had very smart questions for me, and they also, as I mentioned before, said, "We really do want to do this in period." One of the first things with TV stuff is they don't want to do stuff in period, because it's more expensive to do stuff in period. Usually they're asking me, "Does it have to be in period?" because I do a lot of period stuff. It has become a specialty of mine to write stuff set in the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s. So, that told me right there that these guys were serious, that they understand. We also spoke at some length about the Vietnam underpinnings of the stories.
Another thing I think that was probably unintentionally innovative was that Quarry was the first recurring character, the first hero/anti-hero in a series of stories, who had post-traumatic stress disorder. And he had it so early that they hadn't even coined the term yet. That was obviously a part of it. But I also wanted him to reflect what had happened to the country.
I lived through the 1950s and the early 1960s when the world was a very different place. I was a little kid, but I was there. And the world of the late 1960s-early 1970s was about really a kind of major loss of innocence.
The whole idea of somebody sitting in front of their TV eating their TV dinner off a tray watching body bags being loaded onto transport planes. We got very numb. We got very numb to the violence. We were wrapped up in, for the first time, a really meaningless war, and it changed the country. It numbed us, and the violence became something more easily shrugged off, and I wanted to talk about that but through a crime novel.
And the issues of a soldier coming home are as relevant today -- which is interesting for this show, I think -- as they were those years ago.
Absolutely true. And I think it's important to say that Graham and Michael were developing from my material this story about a Marine sniper coming home before the "American Sniper" movie -- long before the "American Sniper" movie -- became a big deal in our culture.
I did not serve in Vietnam. I didn't serve anywhere. I took my Army physical and it scared the hell out of me. But I had very close friends, and one specific close friend, who I observed, the things that he went through. The marriage that went sideways because of his experiences overseas.
On a very basic level, I was somebody in Iowa who grew up wanting to write this kind of story, the sort of private eye/Humphrey Bogart classic noir story, who finally had the sense to draw upon his own experiences in his own times.
Have you seen the scripts? Have you been involved in the development?
The arrangement is as I do one script a year.
I didn't know that. I'm sorry.
I've done one script for this season, and they've shown me the scripts all the way along. I've read all eight scripts. I have a very good feel and sense of what they're up to. I'm very pleased with what I see. I think thematically they're right on target.
Graham and Michael have been so terrific to me, and have been such believers in the source material. That's been important. But they also brought in Greg Yaitanes who is directing all of the episodes. He's a guy with impeccable credentials, and they're mounting a really great production, I think.
Is the milieu in the series, which is set along the Mississippi River, the same as in the books?
The show is set in Memphis and somewhat in New Orleans. That is something of a change, because the books were generally set in the Midwest. And that grew out of my desire going way back to when I was in college and fooling around with this stuff to try to break the mold of it has to be a New Yorker, it has to be in Los Angeles. So in a sense, the milieu is parallel to what I did, because they're not doing that kind of big-city noir thing. They're right along the Mississippi. My stuff is just higher up on the Mississippi.
The Iowa part, waaaay upriver.
Iowa, Illinois, the rock quarries and all of that kind of stuff. I think it was a good move. Actually, there's a book out right now called "Quarry's Choice," that has been out about a month, that is set in Biloxi, Miss., so some of the books I've set in the South, although that's more a function of that's where Quarry was sent on an assignment, as opposed to the overall setting of the stories.
Sitting here in Iowa, I can tell you without risk of being contradicted, even by the people who mistake Iowa for heaven, that New Orleans and Memphis are going to be richer visually and richer culturally, and I think that is a good decision.
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New Orleans production of the Cinemax series "Quarry" began March 30. The next morning, I talked to author Max Allan Collins about his book series on which the new show is based, the project's journey to TV, and the series' 1970s setting, among other topics.
The series stars Logan Marshall-Green ("Prometheus") as Mac "Quarry" Conway, a Marine who returns home to Memphis from Vietnam in 1972 and makes his way back into civilian life as a hit man deployed by a mysterious character known as The Broker, played by Peter Mullan ("Olive Kitteridge").
Here's part three of the edited Q&A:
Q: I can't wait to see how they do the period. I started college in '76 and knew a lot of guys who were in school on the G.I. Bill.
A: It's really interesting. There was a period of about five years when I was finishing up at the University of Iowa on my MFA while I was also teaching at a community college. I've only had two real jobs in my life: sacking groceries and teaching at a community college. The rest of it has been a surprisingly successful effort to avoid real work. That's basically how I define my career. But during those five years -- see, that would've been around '72, '73, '74, '75, '76 -- I was often teaching guys I went to high school with who had been in Vietnam, which was an interesting and peculiar situation.
And one of the things that was surprising to me -- because I suppose like anybody in my generation who didn't serve, when I was around friends who did, there was a certain amount of survivor's guilt -- was that I was very impressed by how well all these guys treated me. In retrospect, I understand. They came out of the military. Of course they respected authority, at least when authority's back wasn't turned. Those were some other guys from Quarry's era that I spent a lot of time with.
I'm a little weirded out by the fact that contemporary books of mine are now period. I grant you that that's odd. It's really odd in the writing of the books, because I've now written as many Quarry novels as essentially historical novels as I did as contemporary novels. I'm sitting there, and I'm having to research essentially my own life.
You can't sit there and say, "Yeah, I remember what was on the radio in April 1972." Of course you don't remember. So you go to Google. "What kind of clothes were we wearing in 1972?" Sometimes it's funny to me when I revisit the early books -- because I go back to look at them to make sure I'm staying consistent and not making too many continuity errors -- to compare what I said about clothing, for example, as opposed to what I say about clothing in the later books. I'm probably more specific and a little more detailed in the later books, because when you're doing a contemporary book people just sort of drag that along with them. I think there's a line in an early Quarry book where he says something like, "It was a room in a Holiday Inn, and if you don't know what a Holiday Inn room looks like you're either from another planet or lucky." And that was the description of the room. That one actually still works.
It's been an interesting thing to be doing these early stories. I did another one of these early ones that's going to be out next year. The fact that they are operating in the early 1970s on the TV show makes me feel like it's probably a good thing for me to have those kinds of stories out there so that the people who come from the TV show don't wonder what the hell's going on, because some of the later books are very different. I'm pretty darn aware of what they're doing and I'm a big booster of what they're up to.
Will you get to visit location shooting?
We haven't set that up that yet, but I will probably down there for the week or so when they're doing my script.
Except for a few film treatments and some great novels, it seems that this is an untapped motif. The fact that it's period, the fact that it's Cinemax/HBO, is very intriguing.
I can tell you this from living through that era, a lot of the veterans who came back, a lot looked like hippies. They had their long hair and they had their beards and their jeans and everything, and then you had the hippies. You could not look at them and know in an instant which was which. But their sort of default uniform was very similar, and they were of the same era. They both had fought the war. It's a very odd, interesting kind of untapped thing.
The guy that Quarry was largely based on, this friend of mine who's been gone for some time -- he did not die over there -- he did about three tours, and he would come back and spend time with me.
One of the things he used to do for me was -- I was already publishing at this point -- he would always show up with whatever guns I was using in the books, because I'm not a gun guy. He would take me out to a garbage dump and make me shoot the guns that I wrote about. "You're not going to write about this stuff if you haven't actually shot 'em." That was a ritual, every time he was home on leave and was staying with us.
The other thing he always did -- because I was still in college -- is that he wanted to go with me to class. And I said, "Fine." And he would go in uniform and we would go in and I would say, "This in my friend John who is home on leave and he wants to sit in." The teacher would say, "Absolutely, this is great."
He did it to make them uncomfortable. I absolutely know that's why he did it, because nobody had the nerve to say anything. I don't even know what to make of that, but that's one of my most vivid memories. He always wanted to go with me and he'd go to all my classes.
Just one day. And just sit there and make them be aware that he was a human being.