Written By April | May 2012 : Page 19
(books) or not (movies), time expended (“Billy and I wrote the screenplay for One False Move in a coupla weeks… Sailor took a year and a half to write”), he offers a striking original metaphor: “A book is not so much like a screenplay; a book is like a movie. ’Cause a screenplay is just a step along the way; it’s not an end product. Movies are a collaborative art, and the writer is one aspect of it. But a book is the finished product, [just] like a movie’s the finished product. I really am the auteur of my book. I’m the guy! There’s no one else.” At the same time, though, Epper-son’s novels are so photogenic in na-ture, he even refers, unconsciously, to his book Sailor as “the movie.” “Did I call it a movie?” he says with a chuckle when that’s pointed out. “I do that all the time. It’s funny—I write my books to be movies. I hope Sail-or ’s gonna be a movie. My first book, The Kind One, I hope to be a movie; it almost became [one]. Warner Bros. commissioned a script for Ridley Scott, and Ridley Scott almost did it, then de-cided he’d rather make another version of Robin Hood . The world really needed like the 97th version of Robin Hood .” As screenwriters, he and Thornton were influenced by specific films, and those films have in turn influenced Tom’s fiction. “It’s funny, our favorite movies were Westerns. Billy’s favorite movie’s High Noon ; that’s my second favorite movie. My favorite movie is Shane . And I always think of Sailor as a modern-day version of Shane . “In Shane, you have the little farm-ing family, and the cattle barons are tryin’ to run ’em off the land, and then the mysterious man shows up on horse-back, Alan Ladd, who has a violent past as a gunfighter; he’s trying to leave it behind him. He’s a noble character, has to strap on his guns to help the family. And then he leaves in the end. “And [in Sailor ] you have a family. A young woman, then you have the son, Luke; and they’re fleeing for their lives; and they’re totally lost and alone. And then they meet the mysterious young man at the beach, who’s trying to leave behind the past of violence—not crim-inal violence, but violence; and he feels compelled to strap on the six-shooter again, to save them. In fact there’s a scene where they’re in a motel, and Luke has ‘an old Alan Ladd movie’ on TV. It’s Shane . In my head, it’s Shane .” His and Thornton’s long-delayed 1991 success was sweet, Epperson says: “I felt, like, a little vindicated. I know a lot of people in Arkansas thought [when we left] Billy and I were crazy, that we wouldn’t last two weeks [in teachin’ literature in little liberal arts colleges in the Midwest or the South. And that’s not a very attractive future as I imagine it!” Yet his and his writing partner’s suc-cess has brought with it a sort of irony. Epperson and Thornton have survived in the business long enough to have reached a point where the films they make, or want to make, are now the business exception and not the com-mercial rule. Their originality, once in demand, is now a harder sell. “I love writing for the movies,” says Tom Epperson. “I’ve met a lot of great people; I met my wife here. None of that would have happened if I’d been successful [early on, as a writer]. Say I sold my novel when I was 25. I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me to write for the movies. I woulda had a totally different kind of life.” Hollywood]. We were told that: ‘You’re crazy. Do you realize what the odds are? The odds are a million to one against you.’ So that felt good. Things have been okay since. It’s been like a normal kind of Hollywood life—if you can de-scribe Hollywood life as normal.” Epperson paid back the money he’d borrowed from Stefani—and they got (and remain) married. Thornton, an Academy Award–win-ning writer, actor, director, singer-song-writer, and sometime squire of famous women, has lived a different sort of life, often in the stare of the public eye. “It worked out well for me,” Ep-person says, “because I’m happy that I came to California. I love writing for the movies. I’ve met a lot of great peo-ple; I met my wife here. None of that would have happened if I’d been suc-cessful [early on, as a writer]. Say I sold my novel when I was 25. I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me to write for the movies; I woulda had a to-tally different kind of life. I would have got my Ph.D., been teaching in some liberal arts college in the Midwest or the South; and I probably would have written novels about frustrated writers “There’s no doubt,” Epperson says, “movies are getting worse every year; there’s just no doubt. I remember in the ’80s thinkin’, Ah, movies aren’t very good anymore . [But] you go back and look at those movies from the ’80s, and they look good compared to what’s goin’ on right now. Really good. I mean, the craftsmanship has just gone out: Everything is so big and so loud and so stupid.” This offends the sensibilities of a man whose icons are Yeats and Keats, Huxley and Nabokov, Hemingway and Fitzgerald; a fellow who still lives within his means and has a statue of the blissful Buddha (and another, of a blissful naked maiden) in his Culver City backyard. “Everyone should try to make the world a little bit better place,” Epperson contends, “whatever [it is that] they do. Writers are uniquely positioned to have a real effect. Millions of people go to see Hollywood movies. And to make gar-bage—bad stuff—to do it cynically, for the money, that’s wrong. People in Holly-wood should hold themselves to a higher standard than they do. But so many— continues on page 54 APRIL/MA Y 20 12 WG A W Written By • 19
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