Robert W. Fisher Archives

Give A Good Guy A Really Bad Bad Guy

Crime Pulp, crime story, crime writing, Fiction, fiction writing, Robert W. Fisher, suspense, thrillers, thrillers and mysteries, Uncategorized, writer tips 2 Responses »

Mar 262013

Interception City, Published by Black Mask, March 15, 2013

The best thing any crime writer can do to make his protagonist more sympathetic and far stronger is to provide a worthy (think: very strong, horribly bad or genuinely psychotic) antagonist in the mix.

Endlessly taught in most of the creative writing classes I’ve had, the villain provides the steel spine to any good thriller or action piece. You can make the protagonist as pure or as interesting or even as damaged as you like, but his adversary in evil better be virtually unstoppable.

And evil in ways most of us would rather not even imagine. But as crime or thriller writers, we must. Ask Stephen King.

Anyway, looking back quite a few years, the most obvious example of this to me is the first Dirty Harry movie, called (unsurprisingly) Dirty Harry.

In it, a young Clint Eastwood is excellent as rogue cop Harry Callahan, a legalized killer with a .44 Magnum, but his stature was greatly elevated (as far as the audience was concerned) when he came up against the shockingly savage villainy of the psychotic Scorpio Killer, played with manic intensity by Andy Robinson.

Andy Robinson did such a great job, in fact, playing a murderous and almost-unstoppable lunatic, that it was said producers and casting directors in Hollywood wouldn’t meet with him for a long time afterward, fearing he was too much in real life like the part he’d so brilliantly played.

And when he was blasted away by Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum in the last act, it was a feeling, I’ll admit, of great satisfaction. The Scorpio Killer finally, after getting away with so damn much, paid for his horrifying sins with his life.

Justice. Or just a need on the audience’s part for a form of simple revenge. For being such a terrible person. Seriously.

The bad guy’s antics are, after all, much of the reason (unsavory or not) that we continue to watch, or to turn the page, waiting for that final moment when the villain’s either blasted into oblivion or, at the very least, arrested and hauled away.

In other words, something inside of each of us can’t stand to see the son of a bitch get away with it.

Ten years later, another of the great bad guys, also played with brilliant savagery, was James Remar as Albert Ganz, the psychopath of 48 Hours (the violent but hilarious feature film debut of Eddie Murphy, not the TV news show).

Ganz killed as easily as he breathed, and went off like a Chinese firecracker at the slightest provocation, again providing all of us in the audience with a great sense of relief when Nick Nolte eventually shot him multiple times.

Which brings us, in my opinion, to one of the greatest feat(s) of film villainy in many a year, performed by the superb actor Alan Rickman.

Within four years, Rickman managed to play three of the coldest, yet wittiest, villains the screen has ever seen, thus adding that steel spine to three great thrillers.

In the original Die Hard, 1988, as Hans Gruber, he was the brilliant but murderous killer who masterminded the almost-murder of an entire office building full of people, thus giving Bruce Willis a chance to be exactly what a real hero should be.

In Quigley Down Under, 1990, as Elliot Marston, he was the evil Australian ranch owner who was systematically committing genocide against the aborigines until American gunman Tom Selleck shot him down, along with his two evil cohorts, in Marston’s own front yard.

And last, but not least, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991, Rickman was the mercilessly evil but wisecracking Sheriff of Nottingham, a part played to the hilt by a truly gifted actor, until Kevin Costner ran him through. And through again, I think.

It’s been a while.

In any case, none of the movies above would’ve been as thrilling, or would’ve played out or ended as strongly, had it not been for the superb villains that each provided.

Which reminds me.

When it comes to superb villains, I have to mention the greatest recent villain to calmly (and sometimes humorously) murder his way across a huge expanse of silver screen:

Javier Bardem as the epitome of heartless and pure evil, Anton Chigurh, in the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece, No Country For Old Men, 2007.

A terrifyingly realistic but somehow subdued performance in every way, Javier Bardem’s bad guy even terrified all the other bad guys in the film. And rightly so. And at the same time gave the film such brilliant forward momentum that it rocketed through to the shocking end.

And if you haven’t seen it yet: shocking is the right word.

In any case, my newest crime thriller, Interception City, written under my pseudonym Parker T. Mattson, is now out in paperback, published by the great folks at Black Mask, and will soon be available as an e-Book as well.

And, yes, I’ve tried to make the bad guys very, very bad, heartless and genuinely evil, even hatefully so, just in case some bad things finally happen to them in the final chapters.

Which would be justice, believe me. And will probably happen, but I’m giving away nothing here. It’s a thriller, after all, and I might’ve (or might not have) broken some rules.

Here’s the link on Amazon, in case you’re interested: http://www.amazon.com/Interception-City-Parker-T-Mattson/dp/1608726894/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364324620&sr=1-1&keywords=Interception+City

If you read it, let me know what you think.

Struggling Screenwriter or Starving Novelist?

Crime Fiction, Crime Pulp, crime story, Robert W. Fisher, Writing, writing books 1 Response »

Sep 262012

What a choice. But a valid one.

In 2011, approximately 350 studio and independent films were produced and distributed from original screenplays in the United States, although well over 50,000 new screenplays were registered with the Writers Guild that year.

Some claim the number’s closer to 100,000, but the Guild isn’t saying.

And that same number of new scripts (50,000 to 100,000!) were registered every year before that. And will continue being registered, every year, year after year, after that. Quite a pile.

Making for some pretty long odds.

In the book world, over 300,000 books were published in the U.S. in 2011, although a few sites are quoting a much higher number. In any case, the odds of getting a book published far exceed the likelihood of having a film company put up $30 million or so to produce even a low-to-mid-budget version of a writer’s first screenplay.

That said, and having only a few scripts produced (Darkroom, a piece of crap horror film, was my first written, in Syd Field’s screenwriting class), and a few other scripts optioned, I’ve discovered it’s far more fun (and profitable) to write a novel and have it published within a matter of months.

Compared to spending years waiting for an optioned screenplay to get produced. Even those screenplays optioned by well-meaning, well-connected and otherwise successful movie producers.

Supposedly, the average time span from writing a screenplay to seeing it on the big screen for an already-produced screenwriter is eight (8!) years.

In other words, that new BMW you bought with your option money will be over by the time the picture gets made, far too weird/clunky to park anywhere near the premiere where anyone can see you crawling out of it.

The Writer! It’s Him! Holy crap, look at that piece of shit he’s driving! What a loser! Did his mom buy him that thing when he was still in school or what?!

Yes, in Hollywood, believe it or not, like it or not, hate it or not, what you drive is who you are. Absolutely true. So scrape together your last few dollars to rent a new Bentley for the damn night. That is, if you even get invited to your own movie premiere. For reference on how nicely screenwriters are treated, see Robert Altman’s The Player.

In any case, another choice emerges: convert your movie scripts into novels.

If your book version does get published, you’ll already have the screenplay ready to go (even though they’ll pay you to get lost and will instead hire the hot young writer who already has a three-picture studio deal).

Anyway, after my first crime novel, Killing Liberty, was published by the great people at Black Mask, and before I finish Killing Time, the second book in the five-book Derek Raiford series Black Mask asked for, I’ve decided to quickly turn my favorite unproduced screenplay, Interception City, into a crime novel. Also to be written as Parker T. Mattson.

How hard could it be?

Admittedly, it’s been a frustrating adventure trying to get it made. As a racially-charged murder & mayhem thriller taking place in a terrible little shithole city buried deep in the Florida Everglades, it’s been called too much of a hot potato by more than one Hollywood movie producer.

One dashing young movie producer’s father, an older Academy Award-winning screenwriter living abroad, read the script and called it great fun, suggesting his son option it. Nothing much happened but it was very exciting for several long months.

Next.

A successful director I know read Interception City on a cross-country flight and told me the premise was far too dark, even with the snappy and fun dialogue I’d provided, to interest him. Six months later he called to say he did want to direct it, after a second read, but thought financing would be difficult.

I’ll say.

For those of you older folks, think In The Heat Of The Night meets any thriller taking place in a terrible little shithole city buried deep in the Florida Everglades.

Friend Michael Winslow (sound effects wizard Larvell Jones in all the Police Academy movies) said it was a great read (fun, too) but too controversial to be produced as a movie without a book first proving its commercial appeal.

I reluctantly agreed.

But (as always with such critiques that require further effort) in response I simply hid the script in my underwear drawer so it’d eventually be found (and produced, to great critical acclaim and shocking financial success) long after I died.

That’s how it works, folks – ask Phillip K. Dick.

Anyway, here goes: turning your own screenplay into a book. It can’t take much time, right? Maybe three weeks, then back to finish Killing Time.

I mean, the hard work on Interception City’s already been done, long months of writing it in Key West between long afternoons of poolside drinking, spicy shrimp at A&B Lobster House and general frolicking until 4:00AM. After all, the story’s there. The characters are there. The dialogue, of course, is there (that’s mainly what a screenplay is, after all, plus some minimal stage directions).

I’ll just throw in a few descriptions of trees, cars, sky, swamps, rooms, dead bodies, etc., etc., etc., and it should be ready to go.

Consider it an experiment. And I’ll definitely let you know…

BTW, and again, Killing Liberty is getting some decent reader reviews, even by people I’ve never met or heard of (really), plus it will be soon reviewed by The Key West Citizen’s Solares Hill section.

I’m hoping for the best.

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Liberty-ebook/dp/B008LMI6PK/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1348672188&sr=1-1

Killing Time in Key West

Crime Fiction, crime writing, Robert W. Fisher, writers, Writing, writing books No Responses »

Sep 122012

Robert W. Fisher

My next crime thriller to be published by Black Mask, Killing Time, will take place in Key West, Florida, otherwise called The Conch Republic. For those who don’t know, Key West is a small dot of coral (less than 4 miles long by 1½ miles wide) located 154 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s the southern point of the contiguous United States, at the far end of a single road called U.S. Route 1. It’s also closer to Cuba than Miami, across only 94 miles of exceptionally warm ocean from Havana.

The weather, not surprisingly, is always perfect.

And the drive is gorgeous, through a string of narrow tropical islands and along many causeways, where the clearest water possible turns gradually from green to pure turquoise well before ending at Mile Marker 0 at Fleming Street and Whitehead.

Like Killing Liberty, my first crime novel, Killing Time will feature tough ex-Detroit PD homicide detective Derek Raiford. And, of course (much as Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner spent his days), Derek’s crime-stopping adventures will keep him knee deep in gore.

Yet he’ll still have time to enjoy Key West. As it should be enjoyed.

Although we’re currently living back in mid-Michigan, my wife Ellen and I will always consider Key West to be our adopted home; adopted because only folks whose families have lived there for a hundred years or so are thought of as true Conchs: the genuine natives of Key West.

Seven generations are about average for a Conch. The rest of us were newcomers, even after years. Freshwater Conchs, we were called.

Fair enough. But newcomers or not, we’ll take that particular island paradise as our home-away-from-home and love it as if we were genuine Conchs ourselves. And we’ll get back there as often as we can, even spending entire months there during the winters.

Anyway, here’s the Key West we know:

It’s a drinker’s town – the well-known phrase ‘Come to Key West on vacation, leave on probation’ is mostly true. The numerous bars (over 200!) are open until 4:00 AM, close for two hours to clean up the mess, then reopen at 6:00 AM for those needing that morning gulp of rum.

I had my first-ever martini (classic gin with a touch of vermouth, stirred not shaken, blue cheese stuffed olives, mostly out of writer’s curiosity) at the fantastic Café Marquesa on the corner of Fleming & Simonton Streets. It was a huge perfect concoction with a ‘sidecar.’ I did not get right back into our 20-year-old Jeep Wrangler, instead managing to walk (stumble) around the island for two hours before driving home again.

I mostly couldn’t feel my face; but no DUI’s for either of us yet.

A couple of years ago the young son of a friend arrived in Key West for a job managing one of the many raucous clubs on Duval Street, only to get two DUI’s within one week. Both of them on his motor scooter.

He quickly returned to Michigan.

It’s an adult town – anyone naïve enough to bring their young children on vacation does so only once. The few parents walking with kids on Duvall Street are constantly putting their hands in front of the kids’ eyes, shielding them from much of the activity. This includes the windows of the many tee-shirt shops with numerous funny (dirty!) tee-shirts in full view.

Mom says, “Fuck you!” is still popular.

It’s a wild party town – Fantasy Fest (ten days leading up to Halloween in October) features public nudity and near-nudity. Most of the women and girls, visitors and locals both, paint on their bathing suits before parading around the streets. Thousands of them! It’s glorious, to say the least, and often makes Mardi Gras seem like an elementary school outing.

The Garden of Eden, the clothing-optional hangout on the roof of the Bull & Whistle Bar (a three-story open-air rock n’ roll palace on Duvall Street that goes day and night), has the occasional naked reveler hanging off the side and waving to the crowds below.

Sometimes wagging instead of waving. Sooner or later, though, there has a be a naked dead guy or girl ending up in the street. So far, no.

It’s a pirate town – always was and always will be, making it a perfect place to set a crime novel. Stories too numerous to even mention easily fill evenings of socializing or people-watching at places like Sloppy Joe’s, The Half-Shell Raw Bar, the Green Parrot, Captain Tony’s or any of the others.

People (good, bad and sometimes very bad) routinely run to Key West to start over and to get away from their old lives. Last names are always optional and never asked. It’s a perfect place to make a getaway. Or to use as a hideout.

But, to me, most importantly:

It’s a writers’ town – more Pulitzer Prize-winners have lived in Key West, per capita, than any other city. The Key West Library is first rate and features many books by both past and present Key West denizens. Book signings by well-known authors are routine at the excellent Key West Island Book Store.

And obviously, everyone knows that Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Dos Passos, Robert Frost, Randy Wayne White, James W. Hall, Tim Dorsey and a hundred other successful writers lived there, worked there and/or simply wrote there.

Again, it’s the writers’ town.

Hopefully, one day, we’ll move back permanently. If so, feel free to keep in touch if you ever want to visit. We do know our way around Key West.

And we enjoy company.

By the way, the printed version of Killing Liberty, as well as the Kindle edition, is now available on Amazon. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Liberty-ebook/dp/B008LMI6PK/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347474896&sr=1-1

I Was A Script-Reader For Samuel Z. Arkoff

Film, Robert W. Fisher, Screenplay Structure, screenwriting, writers life, Writing No Responses »

Aug 022012

In the long-ago Hollywood of the 1980’s, I was hired as a Script & Story Analyst (think: reader) by Samuel Z. Arkoff, the legendary producer/distributor who was truly the “King of The B-Movies.”

It was Sam Arkoff, in fact, who gave the famous Roger Corman his start. Corman remained with him for many years.

By the time I came along, Arkoff had sold American International Pictures, his production company since the 1950’s, and started Arkoff International Pictures in a penthouse on Sunset Boulevard. It was a huge place, taking up most of the entire top floor of a landmark building in beautiful Beverly Hills, right at the edge of West Hollywood.

It had a view to kill for.

According to his autobiography, “Flying Through Hollywood By The Seat Of My Pants: By The Man Who Brought You ‘I Was A Teenage Werewolf’ and ‘Muscle Beach Party,’” Samuel Z. Arkoff produced over 500 movies.

His formula was simple, as drummed into our heads by the head of his story department:

Find a low-budget feature with enough of a hook to not require expensive ‘name’ movie stars.
The script had to contain action, violence and, of course, sex appeal (Arkoff called it fornication in his book).
The script should contain a controversial or revolutionary idea or two, and a bit of memorable dialogue.

Also, titles alone could often sell a picture: High School Hellcats, The Amazing Colossal Man, Drag Strip Girls, It Conquered The World, The Astounding She-Monster, Earth vs. The Spider, to list just a few of his earlier movies.

You get the idea.

At the time, I was living in a large house on Ozeta Terrace, sharing it with a screenwriter/director and his girlfriend, up in the Hollywood Hills. We also had a fantastic view, all the way out to the ocean and back across Hollywood to downtown Los Angeles.

Our place was straight up the street from the Whisky a Go Go down on Sunset Boulevard and North Clark Street. It was also the house that Ingrid Bergman lived in during the making of Casablanca in Los Angeles. The great Sydney Greenstreet had lived next door and he’d recommended it to her when she flew into town.

In case you’re wondering, that entire film, Casablanca, was shot at Warner Brother’s/Burbank Studios, the Van Nuys Metro Airport in the Valley, and Flagstaff, Arizona. The owner of our Ozeta Terrace home was a woman in her late 90’s who had inherited a great deal of property early in life and, according to the attorney who handled the leasing details, had also been Ingrid Bergman’s landlord.

Nice connection.

On my first day as a Script & Story Analyst (reader) at Arkoff International Pictures, I was given the rules and the forms to be used for coverage.

The entire script, regardless of how good or bad it was, had to be read.

I was to write a 1-page summary, covering all three acts, the plot points, subplots, all conflict, and the resolution. In addition, each character had to be listed and briefly described. I was to rate the premise, originality, structure, pacing and characters. This was to be included in a total of three pages. At the end, I was to give my opinion as to potential budget and whether it was a story that could ‘stand on its own’ without a name star.

Fair enough. And, it turned out, great fun.

Then I was taken to a large room stacked to the ceiling with unread screenplays. Piles and piles of them. To the actual ceiling. Seriously, hundreds or even thousands. In that room, I was told a few facts which have remained with me to this day:

The stacks of scripts were at least 2 years old, many of them over 3 years old (again: unread).
This wasn’t the slush-pile; every script in the room was submitted by an agent.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 scripts a year were registered at The Writers Guild; only about 400 movies a year are produced.
If there was even one script in the entire room worth spending the money to get produced, it’d be a miracle.

I was told, “Bob, pick out several and start reading. It doesn’t matter which ones.”

Like I said, great fun.

But not very encouraging for a screenwriter-hopeful. Yet it was sadly true. And almost every script I read was…not great. Not even very good. Agented scripts. ‘Sam you’re gonna love this one…’ scripts. ‘This’ll be your next box office hit’ scripts.

In my many months of reading, writing coverage, and recommending or not recommending scripts to Samuel Z. Arkoff for further attention, I only highly recommended one. A seemingly good one, by someone I’d never heard of.

And I have no idea whatever happened to it. I have not yet seen it as a movie.

I also learned from the other readers that this was almost always the case. Maybe one script out of several hundred got a ‘Please check this one out…’ recommendation. I can only imagine what it’s like getting a screenplay through the reader process at a major studio.

Not fun.

Still, it was a great experience, working with great people, and one I’d never trade. Reading literally miles of scripts, I learned a lot about how to write, and (maybe more importantly) how not to write, a screenplay.

And that’s the trick, I guess.

Learn how not to write a movie, then write one.

And I’ll admit, I’ve used much of what I long ago learned at Arkoff’s (through sheer osmosis, mainly), when I decided to write a series of crime novels under the pseudonym Parker T. Mattson.

Published by Black Mask and available as an exclusive Amazon Prime e-book before going into print distribution

Killing Liberty, through Black Mask Publishing, is currently an Amazon Prime e-book, but will be going into print shortly.

As an ex-Script & Story Analyst, I would appreciate any helpful coverage. Love it or hate it, feel free to candidly let me know what you think.

Seriously.

To Would-Be Screenwriters: This might break your heart. Or make you laugh. Or Both.

horror, Horror Films, Robert W. Fisher, writers life, Writing 2 Responses »

Jul 272012

My new crime novel, Killing Liberty, written under my pseudonym for fiction, Parker T. Mattson, is out there and doing pretty well, but this is about an earlier time and a project that didn’t do so well…

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to have a breakfast meeting in Los Angeles with Gloria Borders, the Academy Award-winner for Best Effects & Sound Effects Editing for Terminator II – Judgment Day. She’d also worked on a whole series of great movies, including Forrest Gump, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, Driving Miss Daisy, and on and on.

More recently, stepping into the producer’s role this year, she Executive-Produced the hugely successful hit, Snow White & The Huntsman.

At the time I met with her, she was working for Revolution Studios, the Joe Roth production company. In any case, her opinion (important insider stuff, I believe) was that the two biggest demographics for box office hits were: 17-year-old boys in baseball hats and, right behind that, 35-year-old women who dragged their husbands or boyfriends or girlfriends to the theatre.

Or convinced them to rent the DVD.

Good to know.

I was then in the middle of doing seemingly endless rewrites on my in-development-and-optioned but never produced crime thriller script, Winter Heat, at the seemingly endless requests of both the director and the producers.

My brain was fried and I needed a break.

So, as that break, I took five days and knocked out a screenplay certain to appeal to the demographic I felt most comfortable with (mainly because I’d been one and remembered it well): 17-year-old boys in baseball hats.

First, I picked the most lurid title ever: Cannibal Zombies Of Voodoo Island!

If I could’ve worked the words Naked and/or Sex somewhere in there, I would have. After all, I was going for the most common denominator (okay, lowest common denominator) and there was a lot of nudity in my script. Starting on page two. And graphic violence. Nonstop. Starting on page three. And humor, throughout.

The script made me laugh, at least.

Steve Zacharias, who wrote the Revenge of the Nerds scripts and the hilariously offensive cult classic, The Whoopee Boys, read it and thought it was very funny. In fact, he told me to shoot it as a straight comedy, although a particularly gory and naked one.

Interesting idea, but I thought I’d stick with just the comic relief bits instead.

Anyway, I knew the poster and DVD box art for a title like that couldn’t miss. Young males in baseball hats would be lining up to see such a film. Or to eventually rent it. I seriously doubted if 35-year-old women would bother, but I was thinking the genres were mutually exclusive.

I still think that. Anyway, the story was simple:

A group of young American students attending medical school in the Caribbean get stranded on an uncharted island where the U.S. Army Department of Biological & Chemical Warfare is developing zombies for use in battle. Experimenting on ‘disappeared’ P.O.W’s from our skirmishes around the world. To create disruptions behind the enemy lines. Needless to say, the zombies on the island run amok, kill and eat the scientists and military people, and then hungrily await their next meal: the unsuspecting medical students.

Standard zombie stuff, again, complete with R-rated nudity and violence. Perfect. I wasn’t even embarrassed to have written it.

It turned out that Joe Wolf, the Executive Producer of Nightmare On Elm Street and a few of the Halloween movies, loved it. And he told me it would probably make a franchise; in other words, continue for 5 or 6 sequels. He even had a budget done for it, a low, low $785,000, to be shot entirely on the coast of Florida.

No sense in heading out to an island in the Caribbean where we might run into actual zombies. That’s right, they’re real. Mostly working on isolated sugar plantation islands outside of Haiti. Just look up the study done by Harvard several years ago if you don’t believe me.

Also, Joe Wolf attached a director, lined up distribution and from then on I knew my wife and I would be spending a summer on a cannibal zombie island somewhere in Florida, shooting a film I suspected would be great fun. And getting paid for it.

And writing a few follow-up movies to it. And getting paid for them. Many more times.

Perfect.

And then, at 78 years old, Joe Wolf suddenly died. Which broke my heart in more ways than one. And it all fell apart. And I threw the script into my underwear drawer.

Where it’s currently scaring the hell out of my underwear. Which explains some of those stains.

Published by Black Mask and available as an exclusive Amazon Prime e-book before going into print distribution

Killing Liberty – A New Crime Novel

Robert W. Fisher, writers, Writing 2 Responses »

Jul 202012

Published by Black Mask and available as an exclusive Amazon Prime e-book before going into print distribution

Killing Liberty, my new pulp crime thriller written under my pseudonym, Parker T. Mattson, is a disturbing book.

It’s especially disturbing because many elements (although complete fiction, as far as the publisher’s legal department is concerned) are based on true incidents. Incidents that I learned about directly from several of the people involved, in the actual locations involved.

Of course, quite a bit of online research was also necessary. As was a lot of fictionalizing. Is that even a real word?

Anyway, I chose to deal with the theme of emerging depravity, in this case, modern emerging depravity (think texting, sexting, Internet webcam chats, etc. ) in an already corrupt and decadent little southern Alabama city, as discovered by hardened ex-Detroit PD homicide detective Derek Raiford.

He’s sought out and hired by the mayor as that city’s new Chief of Police after the former police chief is disgraced when caught in the middle of an underage sex scandal. Instead of being arrested, or even just fired, the ex-chief is simply moved over to the position of City Fire Chief, at no loss of pay, seniority or eventual pension.

No charges were ever filed. No records ever kept. True enough.

And to say the ex-police chief and his minions resent Derek as that city’s new head law enforcement officer (and worry what he might uncover, inadvertently or otherwise) would be an understatement. They want him out, at any cost. And are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that end.

The consequences to them all would be disastrous.

With all that in mind, then:

The gruesome decapitation of Lloyd Baylor, forty-two but recently married to a sixteen-year-old high school nymphet, sets off a chain of events both shocking and puzzling. Baylor’s death soon leads to lies, desperate cover-ups, a missing young girl assumed dead or on the run, arson, and more murder.

Murders (multiple, actually), each more shocking than the last.

And the young widow, a genuine beauty at any age and a seductive mystery in her own right, provides even more resistance against Raiford’s efforts to find her husband’s killer; she adamantly refuses to admit the terrible truth surrounding them all, even at the cost of her own life.

In Killing Liberty, Derek Raiford faces an unseen but murderous conspiracy that could easily leave him dead and buried in the woods.

More than once, in fact, his new life makes him long for his earlier days as a big city Detroit homicide cop. At least there, in all the grime and filth of ‘Murder City, USA,’ he knew who the bad guys were. In his recently adopted Down South home, everyone’s a suspect.

And a potential killer.

Here’s the link to Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Liberty-ebook/dp/B008LMI6PK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342797618&sr=1-1&keywords=killing+liberty

If you get a chance to read Killing Liberty, as either an e-book or a paperback, let me know what you think. And if you hate it, lie to me.

That’s what friends are for.

Ah, Youth – It Really Is Wasted On Them

Robert W. Fisher, writers, writers life, Writing No Responses »

Jul 182012

A Few Books By Lawrence Grobel

Several years ago, my wife Ellen and I found ourselves in Los Angeles with a day to kill, so we set up a lunch with a couple of longtime friends, the writer Larry Grobel (some of his books are pictured above) and a successful movie producer whose name I won’t use because we’re still partners in a couple of interesting projects.

Larry had wanted to meet this particular producer for some time and the producer wanted to meet Larry as well, so that was at least part of the reason for our lunch. And it turned out to be a particularly nice lunch, complete with company that we’ve always greatly valued.

We’d jointly decided on Musso’s – the Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. If you’ve never eaten there, I recommend it as one of the must try restaurants in Hollywood. It’s the oldest so-called grill (founded in 1919) in the city, understandably famous, and it’s mostly the old school crowd: actors, actresses, writers, directors and producers.

I guarantee you’ll see someone famous eating there, either at the counter or in one of the many comfortable booths.

Anyway, over the years, I’d read many of the excellent books written by Larry, most notably Conversations With Brando, The Hustons, Conversations With Capote, Al Pacino – In Conversation With Lawrence Grobel and The Art of the Interview.

Larry’s books read beautifully and are filled with more insider Hollywood stories and critical insights than there are in heaven and earth.

Before crossing the street for lunch at Musso’s, Ellen and I stopped in at Larry Edmunds’s Bookshop and we bought each of the above mentioned books in hardback because I wanted Larry to autograph them. I’ll mention here that, in total, they weighed about 25 pounds; the Huston book alone (at over 800 pages) probably weighs 10 pounds on its own.

I should also mention, though, that I read that huge book about The Hustons straight through, riveted by page after page of terrific stories and photos involving the true film greats and the exciting and classic movies that made them great.

In other words, the real Hollywood.

Larry makes you feel like you’re right there, having a drink at the bar with these bigger-than-life characters and just waiting for the giant bar fight to begin at any moment. Informative and educational, yes, but (more importantly, to me at least) always fun.

In any case, our producer friend at the lunch brought a date, a sweet-natured young woman of 18 or 19. Did I say young? I hope so, because I believe it’s the point of this little piece. If not, you can feel free to sue me, for something akin to age descrimination, I guess.

Anyway, she was a true L.A. girl, very smart and well-mannered and extremely pretty, pursuing an acting career but working at an ‘oxygen store’ where one paid to inhale a dose of pure oxygen, meant to increase your thinking and, supposedly, your ‘being’ ability.

I’m not sure those stores exist anymore.

Ellen and I arrived at the booth at Musso’s last, lugging in that heavy pile of hardback books, and I carefully set them down beside Larry Grobel.

And as I said, we had a great lunch, right out of the movies as far as I was concerned and, over coffee and dessert, Larry brought up the first book, put it on the table beside him, took out a pen and generously autographed it to me.

To which he got a look of utter horror from the young woman sitting across from him.

When Larry picked up the second book to sign, the young woman with our producer friend could stand it no longer. “My God, you can’t do that!” she blurted.

To which Larry explained, “I wrote all these books and I’m signing them for Bob.”

The young girl still couldn’t believe it. She said:

“But won’t the library be mad?”

Working With The Late Great Ernest Borgnine

Movies, Robert W. Fisher, writers life, Writing No Responses »

Jul 112012

Several years ago, in 2000 to be exact, my wife Ellen and I had the pleasure of closely working with the great actor, Ernie Borgnine, at Universal Studios Orlando.

With my writing partner at the time, Rick Pamplin, we wrote and produced a feature-length 35mm Panavision one-man show reminescent of ‘Give ‘Em Hell, Harry.’ But it was about a far more controversial character than Harry Truman: J. Edgar Hoover himself.

Using a team of 12 researchers, we spent months at Universal going over every nuance of Hoover’s life, both private and public. In addition, we had an inside source, Cartha ‘Deke’ DeLoach, Deputy Director of the FBI while Hoover was in rein. His book, ‘Hoover’s FBI’ was the basis for much of our film, although we tempered it with a huge amount of our own hands-on research.

And ‘Deke’ DeLoach even appeared in the film; we cut him into it between Ernie’s scenes, openly responding to and dealing with each of the extremely controversial issues that surrounded his old boss. Mr. DeLoach was extremely effective: highly photogenic and entirely convincing.

Of course, it wasn’t surprising that the film generated huge controversy when it was finished and annoyed a great many people. Including more than a few in the film industry who had been subject to J. Edgar’s wrath in those long-ago days. They hated it.

It was because we didn’t attack Hoover, but rather wrote it as if Hoover was back from the dead and defending himself. Our theme, in fact, was that if J. Edgar Hoover did return, he would apologize for nothing, going immediately on the attack instead of defending any of his actions.

And that’s exactly how Ernie Borgnine played it. Brilliantly. An attack dog set loose on his accusers.

It was, then, entirely up to the viewer to decide whether the J. Edgar Hoover protrayed by Borngine was lying or not.

And when Ernie walked out on stage in character and began speaking, with Hoover’s actual FBI seal behind him (borrowed from the FBI musem in D.C.), Cartha DeLoach said the hair stood up on the back of his neck: J. Edgar Hoover was indeed back from the dead!

And in rare form.

It also turned out that, controversy or not, many law enforcement professionals still consider J. Edgar Hoover to be the father of modern law enforcement. And the Retired Special Agents of the FBI appreciated the movie, as well. In fact, it was shown to great applause to over 2,000 of them in Hawaii at their annual convention that year.

The film additionally helped generate an actual retraction by none other than The New York Times, in response to an article they printed concerning J. Edgar Hoover and the infamous red dress episode. The Times did their own research for over a month before admitting they were wrong.

Ask me about THAT sometime.

All of that nonewithstanding, however, the most pleasant memories of writing and producing that film came from working closely with Ernest Borgnine, one of the nicest people any of us had ever met.

He was not only a gentleman who regaled us with stories of old Hollywood (like when he and two other famous actors got so annoyed with a famous producer that they stood on the back of the man’s new Cadillac convertible and peed into the interior, ruining the car for all time), but a people person in every way.

Everyone working at the studio wanted to meet him, of course, as did everyone at every Orlando restaurant we ever walked into, and he talked to every one of them as if he’d known them for years. He had that gift.

I also had the great pleasure of telling him at dinner one night that I cried more when he got killed in ‘The Wild Bunch’ than when William Holden got shot to pieces. His response, “Ah, c’mon…Holden was a great actor.”

But so were you, Ernie. We’ll all miss the hell out of you.

The Toughest Kid I Ever Knew

Robert W. Fisher, Story Behind the Story, write what you know, writers 1 Response »

Jun 302012

I went to high school during the long-ago Motown days on the west side of Detroit.

It was actually in a pleasant-enough white suburb of mostly ranch-style houses, a nearby Dairy Queen, a small park and even an ice skating rink at the end of our street.

In those days, downtown street gangs with names like the Stilettos or the Bagley Boys pretty much consisted of tough guys with switchblade knives, brass knuckles, sap gloves, bottles, fists and very few guns. In fact, no one much thought about carrying a gun. The thought never really came up, I guess. Most of the gang members (racially mixed, by the way, white, black & Hispanic) had colorful names like Cockroach, Junebug, Farmer, Cornbread Red, Judo Smith and Jabbo (real name Leroy, but he’d already stabbed more than one person in his young life).

Everyone I just named was a pretty good guy. Really. Even Jabbo. And I have no idea how any of those guys are doing these days. I’m thinking they’re mostly retired now and living in Florida somewhere.

I hope so, at least.

I was never in an actual gang (too consumed with the need to live), but every weekend several of us suburban boys headed out to the Walled Lake Casino, a teen hangout where many of the Motown legends performed (as practice, it seemed) before heading out on actual tours. For a dollar or two, several hundred of us at a time got to see The Spinners, The Miracles, The Temptations, The Contours, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, etc., etc., etc.

Literally, the entire line-up from Berry Gordy’s Hitsville USA down on West Grand Boulevard eventually showed up.

Another plus in those days: white soul group Billy Lee & The Rivera’s (later known as Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels) performed virtually every weekend, blasting out the place with the best rendition of Shake A Tail Feather (except for the original Five DuTones’ version) ever heard.

And, of course, with several rival gangs from the big city attending, there were numerous fights every weekend, both inside and (more often) outside in the parking lot. It was not uncommon to walk out and see a young man standing on a car hood kicking a rival in the face and, a moment later, see that same young man dispatched with a thrown wine bottle bashing in his head.

Good times.

As non-gang-members, my friends and I mostly just watched, nodding approval if one or more of the few gang members we’d gotten to know were winning any particular skirmish. In those days, shockingly enough, there were almost no dead bodies left in the street. Or the parking lot. At least, not at the Walled Lake Casino.

In fact, the same guys would show up every weekend, fighting the same rivals, and race away afterwards in hopped-up Chevy’s and Ford’s, with the occasional Olds 442 or Pontiac GTO thrown in. Luckily, we got to travel in my buddy’s bland-looking 1964 Plymouth Belvedere with bench seats, that happened to be hiding a 426-cubic-inch engine with a 4-speed. It was blindingly fast. We won a lot of races on the way to the Dalys on Telegraph Road (known as Bloody Telegraph) in those days.

That was back when Dalys’ fantastic Chee-Chee Sandwich was called by its first name, a melted cheese & chili. It was, and still is, the best and most original sandwich in existence. Believe me, I’ve been in every state in this country and I’ve checked.

Anyway, of all the gang boys and girls (there were a few, girls, 3 blonde sisters in particular known as The Bitches), the single individual titled above truly was the toughest kid I ever knew. That any of us ever knew. That I’ve still ever known.

Danny Wilson (I’m using his name because he was dead at 18) was the most fearsome kid we ever met. In any fight, he was so ferocious he often had to apologize to the person or persons he’d just beat the living shit out of.

A natural leader and extremely charismatic, Danny would often be in the middle of a fight before the rest of us even knew it. I turned around once to say something to him and he was already on the ground, biting some struggling man (not a kid!) who had him gripped around the neck, biting the guy on the chest to get away.

And, the shocker of it all, Danny was all of 5’5” and less than 130 pounds.

Gang boys who stood 6’2” and weighed in at 220 pounds steered clear of him. More than once, we’d see a much larger guy start something with the smart-mouthed Danny Wilson, only to get his teeth kicked in. It was as if Danny would just suddenly be hanging onto the other guy’s hair or shirt, pulling him down and kicking or punching the guy’s brains out.

I never saw him with a weapon. He didn’t need one. No one ever saw him lose.

He was also, I should mention, a career criminal at that young age (16 or so). Danny would steal anything or break into anywhere. We’d met him straight out of the juvenile detention home, when his folks moved into our neighborhood.

To give their downtown kid a better chance at straightening out.

And when I first moved out to Hollywood, a short story I wrote about one of Danny Wilson’s many dangerous exploits (where he and a close friend of mine were almost killed) managed to get me the famous and iconic agent Mike Hamilburg as my first literary representative.

Mike had sold Taxi Driver for Paul Schrader and Helter Skelter for Vincent Bugliosi for big money, so I was more than impressed with the man. This was especially true when we met at the La Cienega Boulevard Norms Family Restaurant for breakfast the next day and he assured me I had a born ear for dialogue. Which he also told me couldn’t be learned, only developed.

As a screenwriter.

That first meeting with Mike Hamilburg kept me going for a very long time in Hollywood. And the Danny Wilson story I’d written and submitted to him was basically true, although fictionized to protect the clearly guilty.

But Danny’s weirdest caper, which turned out to be his last, was when he bent back the large fan blades high up on the cement block wall of the local dry cleaners late one night, climbed up there to break in, and got stuck. The next morning the owner, and then the police, laughed at him before pulling him out.

That crime, and his record, got him sent to big-time and grown-up Jackson Prison at 18 years old. Within his first month there, he was dead.

We were all shocked to hear it, to say the least.

And then his father told us the story he’d heard from a friend of Danny’s who also happened to be inside at the time. The other prisoners learned to be afraid of him soon enough. They also realized he couldn’t be controlled. Not in the least. And so several of them poured flammable cleaning fluids on him and then lit it.

Apparently, it is possible to be too damn tough.

New Book: Killing Liberty

Crime Pulp, crime writing, noir, Robert W. Fisher, Writing 2 Responses »

Jun 282012

You might want to listen to the great Warren Zevon’s take on Down South before reading this…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJlqgoSC_Y

Killing Liberty, my new crime thriller (soon available through Disruptive Publishing in print and as an e-book), is a disturbing novel. Much of that fact comes from the background setting I chose: a swamp of an unnamed city tucked into a far corner of the exceptionally Deep South.

I’m certain many of the residents will recognize the place, although I’d never admit that city’s name to anyone. Why risk getting punched in the mouth (or worse?) when it’s just as easy to keep the place unnamed?

The story I’ve written is fiction, after all, not a documentary nor an expose’ in any sense of the word.

In any case, this unnamed city is so far away from anywhere it’s in a world all its own. You have to drive through seemingly endless miles of timberland from any direction to find the place. I spent 10 months there in a beautiful bed & breakfast a few years ago, and the city was a different-enough location (meaning filled with on-going corruption & decadence, never boring) that I immediately decided to set my next murder & mayhem story there.

Without giving away too much of the plot, I’ll say (just as an aside) that in the actual city three police officers were caught having a sex party with three high school girls. They were fired, of course, but because the age of consent is sixteen in that particular part of the country, and their argument in front of the judge was that “…the girls were all in the 10th grade, Your Honor, the 10th grade,” all three officers could only be charged with keeping the girls out past their curfew.

A misdemeanor, not worth even filing. At least, that’s the story I was privately told.

The police chief himself was sometime later caught in a similar set of circumstances (entirely different underage girl weirdness), but he wasn’t fired or even charged. Instead, he was quietly appointed fire chief, at no loss of pay, pension or seniority. The earlier fire chief was given a very generous early retirement, complete with a nice surprise party.

Like I said, interesting place. Or, at least, not boring.

The entire county is dry, but with a back-country liquor store located just outside the county line. That’s about a 40-mile drive through thick woods from the city itself. Whenever anyone (anyone not a resident, that is) stocked up with enough booze for a decent-sized party and headed back into the county, the store owner contacted the sheriff’s department so the purchaser could be stopped along the way. The store owner and the sheriff then split whatever liquor had been confiscated.

Again, I have my sources.

Also, the sheriff who won the last election (he’d been charged but not convicted with taking bribes from bootleggers) only narrowly defeated the current sheriff (who was serving a prison term for taking bribes from drug dealers).

You can’t make up stuff like this. Well, you can but it often lacks the ring of truth. Anyway, what a great place to insert a displaced homicide cop from Detroit. And a particularly gruesome murder.

Or several. Have fun.

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