Interview: Ron Riekki

U.P./Beckett/Adapting For the Screen

Interviewed by Patrick McAllaster, March 1 2009

What’s in store for 2010?

Well, it’s been a screenwriting year so far.  And some poetry writing.  Talking with an agent about a possible novel I’d like to write, so if that falls into place, then will put a lot of time into that, as will be writing it from scratch–want to gauge interest in it first though.  I was supposed to have two novels coming out on Ghost Road Press this year, had signed the contracts, but last I heard Ghost Road changed their mind.  So I’m still not sure what’s going on with that.  That’s happened to me before though.  U.P. was originally supposed to be published with Overlook Press, but that fell through.  In the meantime, while figuring out the novel publication chaos, I have producers attached to turn my novel U.P. into a film based off of my screenplay adaptation of my novel.  And Chris Kramer–he was the star of the Canadian TV show The Collector from 2004 to 2006–has been meeting with me about directing my screenplay Good Behavior.  And I have another screenplay I just finished that a producer’s interested in.  And starting a fourth screenplay, as well as rewriting the screenplay of U.P. I’m taking meetings with agents and managers and hope to solidify my representation.  A lot going on.  When I have a rare moment of free time, I write poems.  So my break from writing is writing.  Two poems of mine just came out in Loch Raven Review and another one’s coming out in Emprise Review.  I also have a horror novel I finished a few months ago that I haven’t had time to send out to agents or publishers and need to do that.  And I have a bunch of my plays that I need some free time to submit to theaters.  But so far it’s been a lot of rewriting and re-rewriting my screenplays while listening to the Cinema soundtrack channel #1943 on TV in the background.  Thank God there’s more than one thousand nine hundred channels or I don’t know what I’d listen to.

I just thank God I’m prolific.  I wouldn’t want to be one of those writers who write a single novel every eleven years.  Save that for pre-Industrial Revolution humans.  It’s 2010–everyone should be prolific.  It’s funny, but I just Googled the most prolific writers of all-time and of the twenty people listed, I only knew one name.  So I guess if you’ve never heard of me, that makes sense.  Although if you’re reading this, now you have.

Tell our readers about U.P. What do they need to know?

Uh, I don’t know what to say.  What they need to know?  Umm, it’s gotten great reviews in every publication that’s reviewed it except for one publication in Alabama, so I think that pretty much says it all.  If you like Alabama literature, you won’t like my novel.  Every other state and we’re golden–although Mississippi’s a bit of a debate.  The Alabama critic implied that my novel made him want to vomit, which I’m going to take as a compliment.  You know in The Fly–the Cronenberg version–where the baboon goes through the telepod and comes out the other side turned inside-out.  Well, take a Fannie Flagg novel, put it in the same machine and, if a similar malfunction occurs, then you’ll have U.P. (But if the machine is fixed, then you’re just gonna get the same Fannie Flagg novel back, and you don’t want that, so it’s better if the machine is broken.  Except with baboons.  With baboons it’s important to fix the damn machine.)  If you’re more into Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, Harry Crews, Mark Leyner, Richard Allen, Jack Kerouac, Tama Janowitz, Philip K Dick, or Clarence Cooper, Jr., then pick up my novel.  I don’t know what else to say.  Plugging my book always feels weird.  I tend to ramble about other things than plugging the novel when I do interviews.

John Casey said, “I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to read U.P. He’d love it.”  And Casey was actually friends with Vonnegut.  You need to know that.  It’s very, very important to your life that you know that.

Why is adolescence, perhaps male adolescence in particular, such potent subject matter for authors?

It happens early in life.  If we lived life in reverse, there’d be tons of books about old people.  You can quote me on that.  In fact, I want that on my grave.  I had a playwriting professor at Brandeis, crazy dude, who pleaded with us to write characters for older actors, said they were incredibly talented and didn’t get enough work.  But I tend not to fully understand the elderly, but as I’m getting older I’m starting to.  Like the cane thing.  I get that now.  Their knees hurt.  At first I thought canes were useless but now I realize it’s to help them walk.  I was like, “Save the canes for musicals and for booing black entertainers off the stage.”  But now I’m OK if an old person wants to use a cane.  I don’t complain anymore.

Two decades from now I’ll become Beckett and start having impotent old people on stage.  But for now, I’m a bit of the literary equivalent of Jackass.  You know, my literary world can be a bit like Logan’s Run.  Maybe that’s why Hollywood’s seemed to have embraced me so far.  They want Twilight worlds where everyone has good abs and no one’s heard of the term “menopause.”  My characters in U.P., by the way, have very good abs.  I’d put my lead character Craig’s abs up against Stephenie Meyer’s characters’ abs any day.  In fact, if you could please make that a side bar quote for this article, I’d appreciate it, because I’m hoping that Meyers will take me on for that challenge.  Seriously, Craig has some sexy abs.  Also, Stephenie Meyers, what’s up with all the es in your name?  Could you possibly fit any more es into one single name?  She has more es in her name than E.E. Cummings does.  And that guy’s first name is E.E.!  Ridiculous.

Before we move on, I have to add this–and I don’t care what you say, the end to Jackass 2 is amazing.  One of the producers associated with trying to bring U.P. to the screen is a friend of Steve-O and I was like, “Please get him a cameo on the movie!”  I should note that the producer has set it up so that I’ve met with two actors in L.A. so far to talk about U.P. and both of those actors have been Academy Award nominated, so for me to beg for Steve-O to be in the movie was a little bit, shall we say, (I don’t have time to Google the word I’m looking for right here so I’ll just go with the Jewish word koszonom).

Oh, also adolescence is packed full of rites of passage.  Inherently dramatic.  Simple answer.  Next question.

The blurb from Christopher Tilghman says that U.P. is a blend of Celine, Henry Miller, and Cormac McCarthy–that’s quite a mix. What influences would you list in the story?

Palahniuk, Welsh, Crews, Leyner, Allen . . . Tilghman cheated a little bit because I was workshopping U.P. in his novel writing course at the University of Virginia–the room we met in felt haunted by the way (it wasn’t far from Edgar Allan Poe’s old dorm room, seriously)–and he saw that I was reading Miller and Celine.  McCarthy, though, is strictly a Tilghmanian opinion (how’s that for grad school speak?).  I hadn’t read a letter of McCarthy until years after the final draft of U.P.

I love to plug other authors I enjoy, so here’s some of my other favorites–my favorite screenwriter is Caroline Thompson, my favorite playwright is Sarah Kane, my favorite novelist is Kathy Acker, and my favorite poet is Charles Bukowski.  Come to think of it, my favorite author list makes me come across as a feminist.  Wait, Charles Bukowski kind of drops a bomb on that theory.  But are they influences?  I don’t know.  I like ‘em.  I try to read a lot, as many different authors as I can so that one voice doesn’t get stuck in my head and then I come out a carbon copy of them.  When I was studying at Western Michigan, I was talking about books at a party and one of the writers there said, “My God, you’ve read a lot.”  I loved that comment.

I feel like I should do something caring and global for the end, so everyone go to Amnesty International.  But do it after you visit U.P. (Amazon page). By the way, I just checked on Amazon and my book is ranked in sales as 463,975.  Only 463,974 books selling better than mine.  Not too shabby for someone with a Ph.D. degree in Creative Writing if I do say so myself.

Speaking of film adaptations, some writers sell the rights and get out of the way because of the challenges in adaptations, others stay involved. What sort of role do you see for yourself and what do you think is most important in successfully adapting literary fiction for the screen?

I’m interested in being a screenwriter–as well as a novelist, journalist, playwright, any type of writing really–so I want to be involved in the screenwriting aspects of U.P. The more I do it (get to be involved in producer meetings, take part in the rewriting and re-rewriting), the more I’m learning, which’ll help me for hopefully the next screenplay.  I just love to write.  I’d like to be as involved as I can as a writer.  The producers’ll ask me who I want to have direct the screenplay and that’s not really my concern or interest.  I want the producers to work with whoever is passionate about the script.  My concern is in the writing.

As far as what’s important in successfully adapting literary fiction for the screen, this is my fifth adaptation from literature to film, but the first to get actual producer attachment.  Previously, I adapted two authors I love and then two of my previous plays that were produced.  Doing as much adapting is helpful as you learn simply by doing it.  If anyone’s planning to come out to Hollywood as a screenwriter, I’d have ten screenplays in your pocket that you’ve written and rewritten.  At least ten.  Doing all those screenplays will help you hone finding what is visually interesting, how to tell a story cinematically.  But I dunno, feel a bit weird giving screenwriting advice, as I only have things in-development, nothing that’s reached the screen except for the short film Ease that Matt Schutt (Emmy winner for editing) shot based off of my fiction.  And L.A.’s such a crazy town that who knows what’s going to come out of this for me.  For now, it’s exciting and promising, but we’ll see.  Who knows?

When you set out to write do you have particular starting point, a character, a plot outline, a general notion…something else?

It depends on what I’m writing.  When I write poetry and journalism, I tend to only have the starting point and go from there, which is funny that I do that for journalism, but I like to have a feel of energy and spontaneity to my journalism.  Plus I guess I knew where those stories were going, because I’d taken so many notes before writing the article.  With small press novels, like U.P., I tend to just write, let my imagination go anywhere I want.  But I’m working with an agent now for a much more commercial novel and that one I’m planning out thoroughly.  The same with screenplays.  If it’s a low budget indie movie that a friend of mine wants to shoot, then I’ll just write.  If it’s a screenplay I want to get to a literary manager, then it’s thoroughly plotted out with as many of the techniques of Robert McKee and Blake Snyder and Linda Palmer as I possibly can.  The Hollywood screenplays I’m working on now are fairly meticulous in their plotting, with real emphasis on logline/one-sheet/concept.

Are there any current bands/musicians or filmmakers that pique your interest?

I love music!  I’ll ignore the “current” and just list some of my favorite artists, period: Rage Against the Machine, The Fast Computers, Arab Strap, Elliott Smith, Lou Reed, Broadcast, Coeur de pirate, Lyle Lovett, Kate Nash, Placebo, Coldplay, Cassettes Won’t Listen, Young Galaxy, Jem, Taken By Trees, Kings of Convenience, Choir of Young Believers, Nick Cave, Guster, Ryan Adams, Glen Hansard, Alex Parks, Robyn, Alexi Murdoch, PlayRadioPlay!, Postal Service, Adam Green, Counting Crows, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gap Band, Sharkula, Au Revoir Simone, The Blow, Kerli, Bjork, Kira Lynn Cain, M.I.A., Dokken, Everything but the Girl, Queensryche, Bird and the Bee, Holy Fuck, Los Campesinos!, The Mountain Goats, El-P, Jeff Buckley, Jennifer Charles, Pony Up!, Bright Eyes, The Howlies, Soko, Nine Inch Nails, the Leaving Las Vegas soundtrack, Camera Obscura, Miles Davis, The Game, ICP, DJ Zack Daniels and Sinister Kane, Sonic Youth, Vincent Gallo, early Modest Mouse, New Radicals, Nellie McKay, Eskobar with Heather Nova, Fettes Brot, 10,000 Maniacs, Hammerbrain, Sepultura (live), Crash Test Dummies, Cracker, Depeche Mode, Garbage, K’s Choice, Alanis Morissette, Black Moon, Stacy Earl, Soffie O., Cat Power, Blumentopf, Texta, Blood Red Shoes, Kinderzimmer Productions, Elbow, Air, Kery James, One Day as a Lion, Little Boots, Drugstore, Duchess Says, Belle and Sebastian, Automatic Loveletter, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Bow Wow Wow, Battles, Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, and Devon.  I highly recommend you go youtube-ing and type in random acts from this list and listen to what they have.  Awesome songs.  Some of ‘em, like the Rolling Stones, I only like a couple songs by them, but something like their 1969 version of “Cocksucker Blues” is just amazing.  Springsteen’s “American Skin” is the same for me.  I like any Springsteen slow song but not his more up-tempo stuff.

My top ten of who I’m listening to now though is Radiohead, Ben Folds, Fiona Apple, LCD Soundsystem, David Gray, the Into the Wild soundtrack (so cool but Jerry Hannan, who wrote “Society” for Into the Wild with Eddie Vedder knows one of the producers so he was just at my house playing songs with his guitar and harmonica after I cooked food for everyone, very awesome), Ke, The Ting Tings, Oasis, and Lily Allen.  Oh, and probably Ian Brown too.  And Tindersticks, The Veils, and The Mummers have gorgeous songs.  I tend to be into Brit bands and French and German hip-hop for some strange reason.

For filmmakers, my top twenty is very very very debatably David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Jeff Tremaine, Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola, Tim Burton’s animated films, early Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Larry Charles, Stanley Kramer, Michael Moore, John Carney, Erick Zonka, Darren Aronofsky, Frank Darabont, Robert Zemeckis, Vincent Gallo, Peter Howitt, and Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro.  And, of course, Kubrick.  But this list would be completely different an hour from now.

Is there a writer you think warrants critical re-evaluation?

Here’s authors I like who’re often forgotten in many circles–Kathy Acker, Richard Allen, Antonin Artaud, Scott Bradfield, Richard Brautigan, Icebert Slim, Dalton Trumbo, Irvine Welsh, Clarence Cooper Jr, Jim Carroll, Charles Bukowski, Frederick Exley, early Mark Leyner, Henry Miller, Knut Hamsun, John Rechy, Luke Rhinehart, Jerome K Jerome, Jeannette Winterson, Ntozake Shange, Sarah Kane, Tama Janowitz, Stewart Home, and me.  Yeah, me.  I said it.  Insert smilie face here.  But I felt like I didn’t really get accepted by the audience I thought would fully embrace my novel U.P. and that’s the readers in Michigan and the Upper Peninsula especially.  I mean, the book’s gotten great reviews, has serious film interest, and was Ghost Road Press‘s bestselling novel for 35 weeks and has been one of their top ten bestselling books for 51 weeks now (one week short of a full year), and yet many of the bookstores in the U.P. aren’t carrying it.  I had a bookstore in Manistique tell me they wouldn’t carry the novel because it wasn’t set close enough to that town; the novel’s set in Marquette, Negaunee, Ishpeming, and Rock, Michigan.  How many novels can you name ever that are set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and yet this store wouldn’t carry the book because it wasn’t close enough to Menominee in its setting (Rock is only 81 miles from Menominee).  Frustrating.  That’s a reason I’m hoping the movie will get made, so that it will reinvigorate an audience that may have missed it on the first go-round.  It’s a good book.  Just check out the reviews it’s gotten in publications like Meridian, Foreword Magazine, Bloomsbury Review, Third Coast, and other publications.  But I should end with a note that I do very much appreciate the bookstores that are carrying it, especially the mom and pop type stores like the Country Village Bookstore in Ishpeming and Snowbound Books in Marquette.

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Patrick McAllaster is the Editor in Chief for Emprise Review